SEO News | News on SEO -By Mr SEO

Stolen ID Search Engine

2007-01-29T08:45:00.000-08:00

If you use a computer there is close to a 50 percent chance that your personal information was, or will be stolen. A Silicon Valley search engine wants to help. NBC's Scott Budman shows us how one click can show you everything you need to know.

It's easier than ever to do business on your computer, but with that convenience comes danger.

Scams, viruses, theft...all online...all a threat to your good name. Now a search engine to tell you if you've been a victim.

"And you can find out if your information has been compromised online."

StolenIDsearch.com can in seconds let you know if your private information has been stolen.

"This is data being lost because you're on a phishing site, or data lost because you have keylogging software on your computer, tracking every key stroke you make. This is data lost because it's being posted and bought and sold in an internet chat group."

One hundred million people had personal data compromised in 2006 alone, this is one search engine where you don't want results.

Read more...

PPC Search Engine Workshops, to be Sponsored by Yahoo!

2007-01-19T08:17:00.000-08:00

Port Townsend, Washington - (Cheap Web Hosting Directory) - January 18, 2007 - The principals behind PPC Summit have been teaching seminars about PPC, sponsored by Yahoo!, for the last four years. As students consistently demanded more advanced information about pay per click, the intensive format was born.

The PPC Summit search engine marketing conferences are scheduled to be offered in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, London, Vancouver, Boston, San Francisco and Dallas.
Designed by former search engine insiders, the event features two days of interactive sessions on pay per click advertising, the PPC Summit is a new concept in training for search engine marketing, geared toward professionals and managers at all levels. Session participants endeavor to learn the ''how to'' of pay per click in detail, and attendance will be limited to allow increased networking. The summits are designed to provide advertisers and agencies with the tools, contacts and resources they really need to effectively manage a pay per click campaign, not with a vague, 'Big Picture' overview. Each day offers four customizable tracks designed to appeal to the needs and skills of anyone involved in search engine marketing (http://www.ppcsummit.com/agenda.html).

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Q&A Land: New Column From Search Engine Land

2007-01-17T05:56:00.000-08:00

One of my resolutions in starting Search Engine Land was to spend more time doing Q&As with people. There's no better way to ensure I do that than to start a column. So I'm happy to announce that Q&A Land becomes the second column offered by Search Engine Land.

Unlike Link Week, which started this week and runs on Mondays, Q&A Land is a "floating" column. It will happen once per week, but the actual day might change.

Read the full story...

Wikipedia founder plans search engine to rival Google

2006-12-24T05:40:00.000-08:00

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is working with Amazon to launch a search engine to rival Google, relying on human judgement rather than algorithms.

Wikiasari is scheduled to launch first quarter of 2007, backed by multimillion-dollar funding from Amazon.com and Silicon Valley financiers, reports the The Times of London. The name is taken from name from wiki, Hawaiian for "quick," and asari, Japanese for "rummaging search".

Wikiasari will use the same user-based technology as Wikipedia, an online encyclopaedia which allows readers to edit entries. The new search engine will work on a similar premise, with Wales claiming Google’s computer-based algorithmic searches are open to manipulation and are no match for human judgement.

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Danny Leaving Search Engine Watch

2006-09-03T20:50:00.000-07:00

After ten years, I'm leaving Search Engine Watch and almost certainly leaving the Search Engine Strategies conference series as well. My contracts with their owners Incisive Media are expiring, and we've not been able to agree on new ones.

I'll explain more about the situation below. However, let me stress that the purpose of this post isn't to cast blame. It's simply to explain directly from me to those who care about why I'm leaving the site and conference series with which I've been associated with for so long.

Read more...

Search Engine for Financial Services Launched by Dow Jones

2006-05-05T14:45:00.000-07:00

New York, New York - (Website Hosting Directory) - May 5, 2006 - The Relegence Corporation, along with Dow Jones and Company have launched Dow Jones Total Coverage, an ''information command center'' designed for buy-side and sell-side financial professionals.

Dow Jones Total Coverage, powered by Relegence's real-time search and news technology, was created to filter and sort all of Dow Jones' content, as well as information from more than 15,000 third-party sources, to present users with only the most relevant and actionable information for their trading and investing strategies.

It is hoped that users, from fund managers executing multi-asset trades to research analysts requiring 360-degree views of their companies and sectors may tailor Dow Jones Total Coverage's advanced prioritization and filtering system to make fully informed decisions. The algorithm-based customization tools combine relevancy ratings, alerts, subject clustering, real-time search and heat indicators with ongoing monitoring of the markets and holdings for each user's individual trading and investing strategies.

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MSN Search goes Offline

2006-04-07T09:05:00.000-07:00

MSN Search Engine users must’ve been "very pleased" when seeing that their search returned only one message, a warning saying the service was not working:

"The service is currently unavailable. Our team is working to restore service as quickly as possible. Please try your request again later."

According to a Microsoft spokeswoman, the search engine went down around 8:30 a.m. Pacific Time and ended around noon. As for its causes, Microsoft could not provide an answer. The company claimed it was still trying to determine what went wrong.

This outage is rather unusual for a service of such high visibility, giving Microsoft’s technical resources and expertise. Even though the service appeared to be working now, this outage means more consumers are likely to lose their trust in Microsoft, a company doing rotten already from this point of view.

According to comScore Networks Inc, MSN's search engine ranked third in the U.S. in February, with 13.5% of all queries, way behind Google Inc. (42.3%) and Yahoo (27.6%).

Source

PodZinger: Podcast search engine extraordinaire

2006-01-11T07:06:00.000-08:00

PodZinger is out of beta. If you enjoy podcasts, you will want to take a look. And if you are interested in the latest search technology you will deffinitely be interested.

There are many excellent podcast search engines out there. What makes PodZinger different is that the technology does not rely on meta data alone to categorize the podcasts. PodZinger turns podcasts into text and then indexes it. In this way you can search the entire podcast.

The audio is transformed into text with the help of Speech recognition technology from PodZinger’s partner, BBN Technologies.

When you do a search, PodZinger finds the relevant podcasts and also highlights the segment of the audio in which your search term occurred. And it gets better: By clicking anywhere on the results, the audio will begin to play just where you clicked.

Read more...

Google to Sell PCs with Own Operating System?

2006-01-03T17:06:00.000-08:00

Just five years ago, Microsoft Corp. was considered the Big Bad Wolf of the media business.

Armed with a stockpile of cash and the Windows operating system that dominates office computing, Bill Gates' company was expected to huff and puff its way into America's living rooms as well, with video game consoles, home networking systems and TV set-top boxes.

But today, there's a different wolf at the door. Although Microsoft is still flush with $40 billion in cash, it is Google Inc. that the media industry fears most. So intense is Google-fueled paranoia, in fact, that industry watchers believe the Internet search giant could drive profound changes in the media, entertainment and technology landscape in 2006.

Already, old media are investing heavily in new-media ventures. Newspapers like this one are defending their bread-and-butter income — classified advertising — by stepping up their Web offerings. Media conglomerates such as News Corp. are buying Web properties like MySpace.com that connect them to young audiences, who are forsaking television and radio in favor of the Internet.

This year, new media could return the favor by investing in old media — the folks who know the most about producing entertainment content.

Here are some predictions for the media industry for 2006, based on interviews with industry analysts, executives and investors, along with a little intuition.

Cheap PCs, anyone?

Google will unveil its own low-price personal computer or other device that connects to the Internet.

Sources say Google has been in negotiations with Wal-Mart Stores Inc., among other retailers, to sell a Google PC. The machine would run an operating system created by Google, not Microsoft's Windows, which is one reason it would be so cheap — perhaps as little as a couple of hundred dollars.

Bear Stearns analysts speculated in a research report last month that consumers would soon see something called "Google Cubes" — a small hardware box that could allow users to move songs, videos and other digital files between their computers and TV sets.

Larry Page, Google's co-founder and president of products, will give a keynote address Friday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Analysts suspect that Page will use the opportunity either to show off a Google computing device or announce a partnership with a big retailer to sell such a machine.

And that's not the only Google theory out there. Content producers wonder whether Google's push into video search will unravel the economics that make Hollywood hum. If viewers can find and legally download an episode of "Seinfeld" through Google, will that cut into cable and network television's profits?

And what if Google, after equipping cities, starting with San Francisco, with Wi-Fi wireless technology, starts to offer pay-TV service for free?

Still, to date, the company's $123-billion stock market value is based almost entirely on its dominance of one business: global text searches on the Web. Some investors worry that Page and co-founder Sergey Brin could be done in by their penchant for seeing themselves as do-gooders rather than profiteers. But those naysayers are in the minority. Most industry executives and Wall Street analysts believe that Google's search engine business is robust enough to give the young billionaires two or three years of wiggle room to build nifty services first and worry about making money on them later.

Nominate your favorite Search Engine Blogs

2005-12-07T13:17:00.000-08:00

Please Nominate your favorite Search Engine Blogs - hopefull this one or my other blog http://mr-seo.blogspot.com/
Click here to vote for your favorite blogs!

Yahoo Publisher Network

2005-12-06T07:42:00.000-08:00

Yahoo! Publisher Network Goes Beta.

Find the Yahoo ads on this Blog!

The new Yahoo! Publisher Network platform is now in beta and it enables you to:

* Generate additional revenue from your site. Display ads related to the content on your site. You'll earn revenue from qualified clicks.
* Take advantage of Yahoo! Publisher tools, services and programs. Integrate other Yahoo! services into your web site, including Add to My Yahoo! (RSS), Y!Q and much more to come...
* Help shape what Yahoo! offers the publishing community. This beta program is just the beginning. Our mission is to deliver products and services based on the needs of the publishing community.

Mr SEO Launches First Podcast

2005-11-21T13:47:00.000-08:00

Stop by and take a listen. http://mrseo.podomatic.com/

Google Offers Web Analytics for Free

2005-11-14T09:36:00.000-08:00

Disrupting yet another market, Google Inc. is now offering enterprise-class Web analytics for free.

In March, Google acquired San Diego-based Urchin Software Corporation and promptly lowered the monthly cost of the company's hosted Web analytics service, Urchin On Demand, from $495 to $199. Today, the search company is re-branding Urchin under the name Google Analytics and making it available to everyone for nothing.

"From an enterprise standpoint, the price is right," says Brian Comeau, a search engine optimization specialist at e-commerce network Ritz Interactive Inc., which currently relies on Urchin.

Web analytics is the analysis of the data generated by visitors to Web sites -- the pages they visit, the ads they click on, and various related metrics -- for the purpose of marketing and content optimization.

According to Eric Peterson, a senior analyst at JupiterResearch, competing enterprise Web analytics vendors charge anywhere from several hundred dollars annually to millions of dollars per year for complex, high-traffic installations.

Read more...

PPC costs on the rise!

2005-11-01T08:29:00.000-08:00

Soaring profits found in search ads

LOS ANGELES — It's no wonder Google's profit shot up sevenfold this quarter: Prices are soaring for search ads — those simple text ads that appear next to Internet search results.

Advertisers pay each time someone clicks on an ad. Search ads used to be available for a nickel or dime per click. Now they're costing more than $1, some even $40 or $50.

Google and rival Internet giant Yahoo dominate the $8 billion market for search ads, which are sold in an auction setting. So far this year, Google has reported revenue of more than $4 billion, almost all of it from the sale of advertising. "It's a supply and demand marketplace," says Gregg Stewart, senior vice president at search-marketing consultancy Fathom Online. "As more advertisers get involved, that drives prices up."

Rates have risen 18% on average from a year ago, says Dave Lavinsky, who runs a site called TopPayingKeywords.com.

Soaring search ad rates helped Yahoo quarterly revenue shoot up 47% to $1.3 billion. Google's $381 million profit was fueled by a 96% revenue increase, to $1.6 billion, nearly all of it from search ads.

Advertisers love search ads because unlike mass-audience TV or print ads, they are targeted to people who are actively looking to buy. And advertisers only have to pay for an ad if a customer clicks on it.

Read more...

Meta Search Engine Sold for $101,000 on eBay

2005-10-28T07:39:00.000-07:00

meta search engine which was jetisoned by its owners who are focusing on other projects, then relaunched just in time for a listing on eBay auctions? Well the Jux2 meta search engine was just sold on eBay for a bid of $101,000.

Not a bad price for a search engine & meta technology which has been on the shelf for over a year. Just imagine how much the engine would have brought in if it had actually been up and running since April of 2004 and had more than 128 incoming links indexed on Google. I had originally predicted that Jux2 would go for $20,000, which was tremendously different than the selling price. Guess I’m not ready for the Price is Right after all

Read more...

SEMPO Announces New Platinum Sponsor MSN

2005-10-13T07:22:00.000-07:00

Palo Alto, CA (PRWEB) October 13, 2005 -- The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) today announced that MSN has become a Platinum sponsor for the next fiscal year’s activities.

Successful search marketing requires ongoing research and training and SEMPO sponsors provide the necessary funds to conduct primary research and develop educational materials for the industry.

Jeffrey Pruitt, SEMPO Treasurer and co-chair of the organization’s Development Committee, said, “MSN's willingness to become a Platinum sponsor is a clear indication of their commitment to our mission to increase awareness and promote the value of search engine marketing worldwide. It is also a clear indication that SEMPO’s position as the leading non-profit professional association in the search engine marketing industry has been solidified in the past year with the support from our members and sponsors.”

According to SEMPO research, advertisers in the U.S. and Canada spent over $4 billion dollars on search marketing programs in 2004. That figure comprises payments to search engines and search-related media companies, search engine marketing agencies as well as in-house expenditures in support of such programs, including "paid placement," "paid inclusion" and "organic search engine optimization."

“MSN values SEMPO’s mission to provide current, relevant information about search engine marketing to the advertising community,” said Mari Kim Novak, Director of Industry Relations for MSN at Microsoft Corp. “We look forward to working together to increase awareness and promote the value of adCenter as a one-stop shop from which advertisers can manage all their MSN advertising campaigns, end to end, including display and direct ads. In addition, advertisers will be able to use advanced targeting tools and audience intelligence data to reach their desired audiences across the MSN network.”

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New Search Engine Will Give Users...

2005-10-13T07:01:00.000-07:00

New Search Engine Will Give Users Premium Content, For Free

A NEW SEARCH ENGINE, CONGOO, is currently partnering with premium content providers so that upon its projected launch a month from now, it can give that content away free. In a nutshell, consumers will be asked to fill out a basic registration form when they first search on Congoo. Then, when they conduct a search, Congoo will spider content from its premium partners, and display those results prominently above standard results from one of the top three search engines--with which Congoo plans, but has yet to partner.

There are limits, however, to how much premium content members can access. Generally, the maximum will be one free piece of content per search; in addition, each participating publication will establish a maximum number of stories that any user can access within a certain time frame.

The company's founder, Ash Nashed, who secured a patent in 2003 for his business plan, said that a number of general news, financial, and trade publications have already signed up.

But, he said, Congoo will have to walk a fine line to meet both consumers' and publishers' expectations. "Consumers want free content, and publishers want to use this as a way to market their content," said Nashed. "For the core audience that would normally subscribe to these publications, we're hoping the level of access we provide will be sufficient so they won't unsubscribe," he said, adding: "We want to give enough away to attract new readers who will hopefully become part of that publication's core audience."

Read more...

Google launches Google Reader

2005-10-08T11:15:00.000-07:00

Google's reader will:

Let you search for blogs and news sites.
Share this info with friends
Works with your Google account

Sign-up
Google Reader

Search engine keyword prices increased from $1.37 to $1.44

2005-10-07T08:03:00.000-07:00

Search engine keyword prices increased from $1.37 to $1.44 between September 2004 and September 2005 by ZDNet's ZDNet Research -- Since September 2004 search engine keyword prices have increased on average from $1.37 to $1.44, Fathom Online reports. When the simple averages are weighted to remove the effects of the disparate price ranges, the weighted average increase is 19%. In the Consumer Services category which includes education, fitness and entertainment, keyword costs increased 78% and [...]

Google sends email about Google Print

2005-09-27T17:24:00.000-07:00

This showed up in my email today...

Many thanks to those of you who took the time to write notes of
support about Google Print. There have been some incorrect
characterizations about this program in the press, and we want to
be sure you have a clear understanding of the program, and of your
options relating to it.

The goal of the Google Print Library Project is to create an
electronic, full-text card catalog of books (just as we've done with
web pages). Our goal is to help people discover books online, not
read them online; a user who finds a copyrighted books that was
scanned through the Library Project can't view even a single page
from this book, unless the copyright holder has given us explicit
permission through the Publisher Program to show more. At most
we show three examples of where the user's search term appears in
the text, along with basic bibliographic info and links to online
booksellers and libraries.

Here's what an in-copyright book scanned from a library looks like
on Google Print:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/
LibraryProject_screenshot-745613.JPG

It's also important to bear in mind that, just like web search, any
copyright holder can ask to have their books excluded from the
Library Project by following these instructions:

http://print.google.com/googleprint/publisher_library.html#options3

We realize that you may have more questions about the Library
Project, and we're always happy to answer them. You can read
more about our thoughts on our blog:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/google-print-and-authors-guild.html
or can check out what other folks are saying about
Google Print: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/buzz-about-google-print-and-lawsuit.html.
Feel free to email us at print-support@google.com.

Once again, thanks for writing. We hope and expect that continued
dialogue with the publishing community will help us build a
program that benefits everyone.

Sincerely,

The Google Print Team

A Microsoft response on search engine ads

2005-09-26T08:21:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK Microsoft was to unveil Monday its own system for selling Web advertising, as it struggles to compete with Google and Yahoo in the expanding Web search business.

The system, to be used by MSN, is meant to improve on those of Microsoft's rivals by allowing marketers to aim ads on Web search pages to users based on their sex, age or location.

The move is part of Microsoft's broad response to the threat from Google, which is using its powerful advertising sales network to support an expanding range of free software products and Internet services. Last week, Microsoft announced a broad reorganization that placed MSN in the same group as its Windows operating system, indicating that it saw software delivered over the Internet - and possibly paid for through advertising - as central to its future

Read more...

MR SEO launches new site and services

2005-09-19T12:17:00.000-07:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:
Joe Balestrino
www.mr-seo.com
joe@mr-seo.com

New York, NY -- September 20, 2005 -- Online businesses searching for website development, search engine optimization and other web services can now save time and money by enlisting the services of Mr. SEO. Mr. SEO, a giant in search engine optimization, has now expanded their business to meet the needs of clientele who require a full range of web-based services. A longstanding and well respected SEO firm in the online community, Mr. SEO has launched a new website detailing their SEO, search engine submission, blog building, content writing, press release, PPC, article creation and link exchange services.
The ability to provide additional services as part of an overall package that includes top-notch SEO is a boon for those looking to develop and optimize their web presence.

According to Joe Balestrino, President of Mr. SEO: “Despite increased awareness of the necessity for SEO, it’s still often an afterthought in web-based business development. Unfortunately, it can be a very costly afterthought for businesses with pre-existing sites that are not search engine friendly. After years of providing SEO while working with various developers, we decided to expand our services to offer the option of having websites retooled or created from scratch with an emphasis on SEO. The benefit to our customers is that they can now have a site developed specifically for their individual business needs that is search engine friendly from the ground up, and at a substantial savings.”

Mr. SEO offers a free site evaluation for traditional SEO services, as well as a free quote for website development and redevelopment proposals. Services can be purchased separately or in combination.

Time Warner's AOL May Dump Google Search Engine, Use Microsoft

2005-09-15T14:30:00.000-07:00

Sept. 15 (Bloomberg) -- America Online, the world's biggest Internet access provider, may replace Google Inc.'s search engine with a rival product from Microsoft Corp., said a person familiar with the matter.

Microsoft also is considering taking a stake in America Online, a unit of Time Warner Inc., as part of a broader agreement the two companies are discussing, the person said. The person declined to say how large the potential investment might be.

company, to shore up its position in the search market and revive its MSN Internet business. Google controlled 56 percent of global search queries in June, Yahoo! Inc. had 22 percent and Microsoft had 11 percent.

``Microsoft's problem is that despite having all this stuff, they haven't really budged their share of search,'' said Danny Sullivan, editor of London-based SearchEngineWatch.com, which tracks the search industry.

Time Warner Chief Executive Richard Parsons said this week he is considering options including a proposal from investor Carl Icahn that the company spin off its cable unit and buy back more stock. The shares have fallen 61 percent since AOL acquired Time Warner in January 2001. The company lost more than $100 billion in 2002 after the Internet bubble burst.

Lou Gellos, a Microsoft spokesman in Redmond, Washington, declined to comment, as did Time Warner's Ed Adler in New York.

``Google and AOL have a healthy global partnership and AOL remains a valued partner,'' Google spokesman Michael Mayzel said. He said he was unable to comment further.

Time Warner shares rose 58 cents to $18.50 at 4 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. Microsoft fell 4 cents to $26.27 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Google rose 53 cents to $302.62.

Instant Message

AOL and Microsoft also talked about making their instant messaging services compatible and jointly selling online advertising, the person said. The talks were reported earlier today in the Wall Street Journal. The New York Post earlier today reported that Microsoft may take a stake in Time Warner.

AOL, which has lost 6 million dial-up subscribers since 2002, this year added a free Web site with videos, news and a search engine powered by Google. The free service marked a key part in a plan by Parsons and AOL Chief Executive Jonathan Miller to bolster sales as subscription fees fall.

``Time Warner's not a technology company,'' said Richard Steinberg, president of Boca Raton, Florida-based Steinberg Global Asset Management, which owned 38,000 Time Warner shares as of June. ``It's a content company.''

Google provides Web search technology for AOL and sells the text-ads that appear alongside AOL's search results. The companies signed the agreement in May 2002.

Online advertising and other fees generated by America Online accounted for about 11 percent of Google's revenue in the six months ended June 30, Google said in a Sept. 8 regulatory filing

Read more...

Google Launches "Blog Search"

2005-09-14T08:19:00.000-07:00

Every day millions of bloggers use the web to express themselves - sometimes to just a few friends, sometimes to a worldwide audience. We wanted to create a better way to allow people to find out what's being written in blogs, as it's being created.

Read more...

Meta-search engine to help locate displaced people after Katrina hurricane

2005-09-13T17:06:00.000-07:00

Louisiana Tech has reached further in its help to Katrina victims, this time through technology.

Dr. Box Leangsuksun, an associate professor of computer science, along with five computer science graduate students, has created a new Web site aimed at locating people displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

His hope is that the site will help streamline the search process. Other sites are available that perform similar tasks, he said, but they contain so much information that users can be stymied.

"Our job is to simplify (the process) so the user doesn't have to navigate through so much data," he said.

Leangsuksun said work on the search engine began because he couldn't ignore his desire to help others.

"After the hurricane hit, I kept watching TV and feeling depressed," he said. "I was in Thailand during the tsunami, and I felt bad because I had to come back to teach and couldn't help. I thought we should do something here to help the hurricane victims in some way. I feel like this is my second chance to help people."

Leangsuksun and the Extreme Computing Research Group began working on www.searchkatrina.org Sept. 2, and it was up and running five days later. The group members are Anand Tikotekar, Kshitij Limaye, Kiriti Munganuru, Sunil Sudhakar, Yudan Liu and Arpan Darivemula. All are originally from India except Liu, who is from China.

Though the team put in long hours and worked nonstop through the weekend, Leangsuksun said they feel good.

"If we can help one or two people find their loved ones, it's worth the hard work," he said.

Noting the site's user friendliness, Leangsuksun said, "Simple is beautiful."

Read more...

New legal threat to Google over GMail

2005-09-13T04:26:00.000-07:00

Google, the internet search engine, is facing a renewed threat of legal action from a company that claims to own the intellectual property rights to its GMail e-mail service.

Independent International Investment Research, a British company that specialises in research and has several leading City investment banks as clients, argues that it launched "G-MailTM web based email" in May 2002.

IIR's version of G-Mail was developed by one of its subsidiaries, Pronet, which specialises in research about the currency markets for banks and other financial institutions.

The idea was that subscribers to its research could use G-Mail to disseminate it and discuss it over the web confidentially.

The development came nearly two years before Google unveiled its own branded e-mail service, known at "GMailTM".

Google's GMail services give subscribers their own web-based e-mail account with the benefit of vast amounts of storage space.

Read more...

MSN Developer Center...Coming September 13th

2005-09-10T00:23:00.000-07:00

New MSN APIs To Be Offered

MSN is to offer series of APIs for MSN Search, MSN Virtual Earth, MSN Messenger and MapPoint for developers who wish to tap into or enhance these products. The program and information isn't live yet, but it will go up in the near future here.

Microsoft says the new area will "give developers one-stop access to a full range of tools, technologies and guidance for greater success in building powerful applications that interact with MSN services and data. Resources include technical articles; newsgroups, forums and blogs; software developer kits (SDKs) for MSN Search, Windows Desktop Search and MSN Messenger." News.com also has a story here: Microsoft Web plan takes aim at Google. Below is the further information MSN has sent us:

MSN will be unveiling a development platform of new application programming interfaces (APIs), Web services and other components designed to help developers build more innovative search, mapping and instant-messaging capabilities. MSN is focused on developing innovative, software-driven and globally scalable communications and information services that will provide consumers with the most useful online experience. The third party developer ecosystem is a key component of delivering on this objective. By opening up our platform to the developer community we hope to extend the opportunity to innovate and create new services and applications thereby providing an even more useful experience for our customers. Below are the specific details for each API by product:

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Online Casino trying to take advantage of SEO companies and bait them with a few dollars to do their bidding.

2005-09-04T06:31:00.000-07:00

(I-Newswire) - MSN Search Engine Optimization Contest Online Casino BTDino is a scam. If you are a top of the line Search Engine Optimization company you know how this is being played. They are scamming us for our expertise to try and pump their site up to the top of the search engines for the phrase Onlin0 Casin0 Gamblin' ( you noticed I did not even consider doing this name )

Fact is that if they can get 50 sites to the top of the Online Casino BTDino search listing using Onlin0 Casin0 Gamblin' as the anchor text they will increase their power to get to the top of Onlin0 Casin0 Gamblin'

This is the lowest from of a Search Engine Optimization Contest. This is the lowest form of taking a good enterprise and tossing it in the trash. Online Casino BTDino is attempting to take good companies at the top of their game and toss peanuts to them, use them and use their good name.

I suggest that those companies that join in this contest for Online Casino BTDino should wait and see how their good name is spoiled, all for a few dollars. This will make a mark on your name and company by showing how you are willing to support gambli.. and most of all willing to "sell out" your great services to any site. This you cannot do.

They are doing this under the name of MSN, as if this company approves of them using their name. I wonder if MSN approves of them taking a "search engine optimization contest", turning it around and using it to pump up their site. If MSN approves, I feel sorry for the integrity of the company. If they don't approve they will ban this site forever from their database and encourage Google and Yahoo to do the same.

Source...

View the Damage by Katrina on Google Earth

2005-09-03T16:11:00.000-07:00

A natural disaster brings out the need for up-to-the-minute maps and images, and Google Earth community members have created more than 100 overlays in the last 24 hours that tell the story of Hurricane Katrina's effect. These overlays drape on top of existing satellite images, and NOAA has been posting these flyovers so people can actually see the incredible devastation.

If you don't already have Google Earth, download it to see some of the overlays that illustrate the change from previous images to the way things are now. Click on any of the overlays, which will open the application.

Here's an aerial "before" image of the Superdome area.

Read more...

WebmasterRadio.FM to Air Exclusive Search Engine Strategies Conference "Wrap-Up" Radio Special

2005-09-02T14:43:00.000-07:00

The live special will discuss the features and highlights of August's Search Engine Strategies conference, the largest and most important conference dedicated to the search engine and search engine marketing industries.

Fort Lauderdale, FL (PRWEB) September 1, 2005 -- WebmasterRadio.FM, a free, 24/7, internet business radio network, announces an exclusive "wrap-up" radio special covering the highlights of the Search Engine Strategies conference held August 8-11 in San Jose, California. The SES "wrap-up" radio special will be broadcast live, Friday, September 2, 2005 at 10 a.m. EST on http://www.WebmasterRadio.FM and will also be available in Podcast format.

The exclusive special will provide insight into this month's hugely successful Search Engine Strategies conference, including seminar highlights and after-show tips.

The SES "wrap-up" radio special will be hosted by Search Engine Strategies Conference Chair and Organizer, Danny Sullivan; Brandy Shapiro-Babin of WebmasterRadio.FM; and Sarah MacKay, also known as Ms. Write of WebmasterRadio.FM.

The exclusive radio special will provide information and tips to both conference participants and those interested in further involving themselves in the search engine community. Interviews with trade show contributors and exhibitors will help to unravel the SES experience and provide what attendees "need to know" to maximize this month's event.

"After the dust settles from an event like this, it's important to get a good perspective on what you learned and what you will take with you," explained Brandy Shapiro-Babin, WebmasterRadio.FM's Vice President of Marketing. "This month's Search Engine Strategies conference was a huge hit, and our radio special will enable participants to get the most out of their experience."

Special guest interviews will include Monte Cahn, CEO of Moniker.com; James Speer, Vice President Marketing and Products, IAC Advertising Solutions/AskJeeves and the Vice President from Who's Clicking Who.

About WebmasterRadio.FM
WebmasterRadio.FM strives to lift the "veiled curtain" of the Internet to bring the business community together through an interactive radio network. Its listeners are a global group comprised of everyone from corporate executives and decision makers to individuals who work for themselves, small and mid-sized businesses to those just starting out. The WebmasterRadio.FM listening audience has a vast appeal to anyone looking to learn industry-specific information from the most successful marketers and technology experts in the world. These Internet "influencers" create, learn and listen in a true community destination.

New and archived online business radio shows are now available in podcast format on WebmasterRadio.FM's re-designed Web site. To tune into WebmasterRadio.FM's live content, or to check out the show lineup, please visit www.webmasterradio.fm.

Media Contact:
Brandy Shapiro-Babin
303-882-5246

Source emediawire

SEOBook Blogger Sued Over Comments Seeking Legal Donations

2005-09-01T08:42:00.000-07:00

August was one hell of a month for Aaron Wall, who was sued by the dodgy Traffic-Power company over comments left on his SEOBook blog by readers. Aaron’s story has become national news as the Wall Street Journal covered his situation yesterday and bloggers all over the world have supported Aaron as this lawsuit has the potential to go all the way to the supreme court. Aaron’s blog has reader comments, which makes it a public forum. The public posted comments on SEOBook about Traffic-Power, which is speech. Traffic-Power wants those comments shut down. Why?

Well, a search in Google for their company name may be part of it. The blog entry with negative comments on Traffic-Power in question is ranked #5 on a search for Traffic Power. Aaron’s blog was ranked #3 in Google two days ago for “traffic power", however, due to all of the attention SEOBook has been getting after being sued by Traffic Power, other sites covering the suit are popping up in the Google results. Oh yeah, talking about judging a book by its cover, the alledged shotty SEO agency’s site is no where to be found in the Google results because Google banned them and many of their clients last year for SEO spamming.

Back to Aaron. Given the support from the blog, SEO, and even law community, Aaron is going to fight the Traffic-Power suit and is looking for help to pay some Las Vegas commercial lawyers who are versed in web speech suits. Aaron posted his acceptance of donations on the SEOBook today.

This suit is not about Traffic Power. This suit is not about this blog. This suit is more about free speech, which is the very fabric that holds the web and democracy together. An issue far more important than I could ever pretend to be.

If I do not face this suit, then it is easier for the next person to get trampled. After all the support people have offered I do not think it is the right decision to tuck tail and run, especially since I am still unaware of what specifically is wrong - and never once has there been an attempt to tell me.

Tomorrow I will try to hire a lawyer (as I have already talked to a few, so I can’t imagine it will be hard to get one of them to accept the case if I have enough money, which I think I should - at least to get started). There are some people who have already helped me a bunch for free. There time and attention is worth money and their help was available only via donations from others.

I am not sure how much people will donate, but if direct donations exceed legal costs for the Traffic Power case the remainder of the donations will be sent to organizations such as EFF, ACLU, and Public Citizen.

If you have more web reach than money a brief mention of what is going on may help more than a direct monetary donation.

If you have some spare cash, and/ or your livelihood or quality of life depends on free speech online please consider donating directly to one of the above listed charities, or via donation if you want to help me out with this case.

Google takes ad sales to print

2005-08-31T08:11:00.000-07:00

Google is expanding its lucrative Internet advertising network into the print world in a bold attempt to capture traditional ad dollars.

The search king, which makes 99 percent of its revenue from Internet ads, is quietly testing the waters of print advertising sales, according to executives at several companies that have bought the ads. Google recently began buying ad pages in technology magazines, including PC Magazine and Maximum PC, and reselling those pages--cut into quarters or fifths--to small advertisers that already belong to its online ad network, dubbed AdWords.

"We were approached by Google two and a half months ago, telling us that they were starting this print advertising campaign," Michael Keen, president of Inksite, one of the five advertisers in PC Magazine, said Monday. "Because we had been one of their AdWords advertisers, they thought we would be a good candidate to try their new advertising" effort.

The experiment, as it is described by the companies buying the ads, is Google's latest foray into display advertising and another big step toward becoming a one-stop shop for ad sales, whether online or offline. The trial also marks the first time the company has ventured offline with any of its products, according to industry watchers

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Search Engine Marketing Seminar Scheduled

2005-08-30T08:23:00.000-07:00

Canton, Ohio - (via THE HOSTING NEWS) - August 30, 2005 - Platform Lab is hosting a search engine marketing seminar presented by leading search engine marketing experts Matt Bailey and Jennifer Laycock. Bailey and Laycock are requested speakers at search engine marketing conferences, including Danny Sullivan's world-renowned Search Engine Strategies conferences.

The seminar titled "Search Engine Marketing Made Simple" will be held on September 27, 2005 from 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM at the Business Technology Center (1275 Kinnear Road, Columbus, OH). The early registration fee is $99, effective until September 15, 2005, at which time the price becomes $149.

Bailey and Laycock will present a one-day crash course designed to help professionals increase traffic on their web sites, gain a competitive edge, and grow their online businesses.

Subject matter includes how to improve rankings in Yahoo, Google, and MSN, evaluate web statistics and track return on investment, and write effective copy for both customers and the search engines.

The seminar will conclude with an interactive session during which Bailey and Laycock will review attendees' web sites and provide advice and feedback. For more information or to register, please go to http://www.thekarchergroup.com/seminar-columbus-signup.asp or call 330.493.6141.

Source

Expired Domains Search Engine Launches

2005-08-25T18:53:00.000-07:00

Las Vegas, Nevada - (via THE HOSTING NEWS) - August 24, 2005 - Everyday over 20,000 domains re-enter the market, and are often registered before anyone notices. www.pcNames.com has tracked these domains and added them to a large database, which now has over 3 million available domains and can be searched for free.

With the free expired domains search engine, users need only come up with a name, idea, or word and are then met with thousands of quality available domains relating to their search.

Anyone who has recently attempted to find a quality domain understands the difficulty and frustration of such a task. Up till now there has been only two options: settle for a long awkward looking domain, or purchase one from a private owner for a large sum of money. Now, there is a third option offered by pcNames.com.

The usual process of finding a domain is: come up with a domain name, check if it’s available, if not, then come up with another domain name and check again. This becomes a tedious and timely process, as the user must come up with a name that is not in the list of 53 million domains.

Chris Richmond, President and Founder of pcNames.com, has this to say about the new search engine, ''No one profits from having a user spend countless hours trying to find a domain name, which is why we have spent the time to make it as easy as possible for anyone to find and purchase a quality domain. After a user enters a short keyword the system is not only searched for that keyword, but also up to 5 additional related terms. For example, if the user enters the word loan, the system will search for all available domains containing loan, lend, borrow, debt, credit, or mortgage. The system then sorts the results by the number of times the domain is taken in other tld's making finding a quality domain easier then ever.''

The new free deleted domain search engine can be found at: http://www.pcnames.com.

New Yahoo Site Explorer To Provide Linkage Data, Bulk Submit

2005-08-25T08:40:00.000-07:00

During the Search Engine Q&A on Links session here at SES today, Tim Mayer from Yahoo said his company is launching (not live yet) Yahoo Site Explorer that provides webmasters and other interested parties with linkage data.

From a SES Session Summary:

Yahoo Site Explorer is a place to see which pages Yahoo has indexed. After clicking "Explore URL" you'll find the number of pages found in the Yahoo Index and also the number of inlinks. You can sort pages by "depth," submit URLs, and quickly export the results to CSV format. Site Explorer is also supported via an API.

Read more...

Google Launches Google Talk

2005-08-24T04:50:00.000-07:00

Want Google Talk? You Need Gmail!

How do you get Google Talk? You have to have a Gmail account. But Gmail remains a closed beta, so how to get in if you're not there already?

Google's established a new program allowing anyone in the US who can receive an SMS message to gain a Gmail account. That pretty much means anyone with a US cell phone (though I'm betting a Canadian number will also work).

Visit this page and instructions on where to send a message to Google are posted. Once you receive your code via SMS, follow these instructions, you can get an account.

Why this runaround? Why not just open things up? Google says it wants to find a way to expand the program but prevent it from being used by those who might set up a ton of accounts for spamming purposes.

"We wanted to expand the list of people who can do it [Gmail], so we're doing these text message signups. But we want to prevent lots of spam. We want to make sure Gmail is not a haven for spammers or a place where you receive spam. So we decided at this point not to go forward with an open strategy but a slightly closed one," Harik said.

By the way, Google does plan to offer SMS messaging for those outside the US to get Gmail accounts, as it sorts out details with various access providers, it said.

Read the rest of this article at SearchEngineWatch

Google to Deliver Instant Messages

2005-08-23T05:29:00.000-07:00

The service may start as early as Wednesday, sources say. The firm will face tough rivals

SAN FRANCISCO — Watchers of Google Inc. soon will have something new to chat about — and with.

Continuing its rapid expansion into new product categories, the Internet search giant plans to launch an instant messaging program called Google Talk as early as Wednesday, according to people familiar with the service.The new service follows by just a few days the introduction of Google Sidebar, which pulls news stories, photographs, weather updates, stock quotes and other features onto a user's computer without opening a Web browser.

With all the new services, Google now competes with Internet portals such as Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Time Warner Inc.'s America Online squarely on their turf, even as those companies encroach onto Google's with updated search engines.

Google has been playing catch-up with many products, such as e-mail, a personalized home page at Google.com and online maps. The goal is to get consumers to stay longer, rather than simply search for websites and then click away.

Compiling a list of buddies to chat with through instant messaging provides the kind of "stickiness" these companies covet.

"Like any big company, they've got a brand name, and they've got to keep extending it," said John Tinker, an analyst at Think Equity Partners who had not seen Google Talk.

"Because the reality is, there's not a whole lot of difference between their search [engine] and anyone else's."

According to a person who has seen the service, Google plans to let users chat using more than just their keyboards. Like similar programs from competitors, Google Talk also will let computer users with a headset have voice conversations with other computer users with headsets, this person said.

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This was mention on Oct 21 2004 in webproworld

Blogger Cuts down on Blog Spamming

2005-08-21T17:43:00.000-07:00

Flag As Objectionable?
Have you ever found yourself clicking the Next Blog button over and over again only to come across a blog that wasn't exactly to your taste? Maybe it was politically incorrect, potential hurtful, or just plain gross? Well, one person's vulgarity is another's poetry. Or something like that. When it comes to judging which is which, things can get a little tricky.

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Blogger add-in for Word

2005-08-20T22:19:00.000-07:00

Google has released an add-in that lets you use Blogger within Microsoft Word.

If you have a Blogger account, all you have to do download and install the free Blogger for Word add-in. A Blogger toolbar will appear in Word, enabling you to publish to your blog, without even opening your browser. Google claims the experience is as seamless as saving a file to your computer.

The toolbar button “Open Post” lets you edit your last 15 Blogger posts in Word. Klicking the “Save as Draft” button enables you to save a document in your Blogger account, but not publicly on your blog. It can then be published when you feel the time is right.

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Webmasters seek to unlock search engine secrets

2005-08-20T06:27:00.000-07:00

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - Free-flowing beer, live music, karaoke and arcade games kept the party raging at the Googleplex the other night, but the real action was unfolding inside a sterile conference room at Google Inc.'s headquarters.

That's where the cunning Internet entrepreneurs who constantly try to manipulate Google's search engine results for a competitive edge were trying to make the most of a rare opportunity to match wits face-to-face with the company's top engineers.

Google's code-talking experts, despite putting on a show of being helpful, weren't about to reveal their "secret sauce" - Google's tightly guarded formula for ranking Web sites.

But that didn't zap the energy from the "Google Dance" - an annual summer party that's become a metaphor for the behind-the-scenes twists and turns that can cause Web sites to rise and fall in Google's search results.

For the millions of Web sites without a well-known domain name, those rankings can mean the difference between success or failure because Google's search engine drives so much of the Internet's traffic.

"Being on the first page of Google's results is like gold," said Web site consultant Gordon Liametz, one of the roughly 2,000 guests at this year's party, held earlier this month at Google's colorful corporate campus.

The Web site administrators, known as webmasters, and their consultants paid particularly close attention to Google engineer Matt Cutts, the company's main liaison with the webmaster community and this party's star attraction.

"That's the Mick Jagger of search!" exclaimed e-marketing strategist Seth Wilde as he strolled by Cutts and his audience of webmasters.

Cutts, who has worked at Google for five years, sees it differently.

"I feel more like the Rick Moranis of search because I end up dealing with so many quirky and weird cases," he said.

With so much at stake, low-ranked Web sites spend much time and money trying to elevate their standing, even if they must resort to deception.

The tactics include "keyword stuffing" - peppering a Web page with phrases associated with a specific topic such as "laptop computers" in hopes of duping the software "spiders" that troll the Internet to feed Google's growing search index.

It's a risky strategy because Google and other search engines penalize Web sites that get caught gratuitously repeating the same word. In the worst cases, the offending Web sites are deleted from the index so they don't show up in search results at all.

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Google is Top Search Engine in July, MSN Shows Greatest Gains

2005-08-19T09:53:00.000-07:00

Reston, Virginia - (via THE HOSTING NEWS) - August 19, 2005 - comScore Media Metrix has released its monthly qSearch analysis of activity across competitive search engines. In July 2005, Google maintained its market share lead in the U.S. search market with 36.5 percent of all the searches submitted, followed by Yahoo! at 30.5 percent and MSN at 15.5 percent.

Share of Online Search Submissions
Source: comScore qSearch
Total U.S. - July 2005

Google Sites - 36.5%
Yahoo! Sites - 30.5%
MSN-Microsoft Sites - 15.5%
Time Warner Network - 9.9%
Ask Jeeves - 6.1%
InfoSpace Network - 0.9%
All Other - 0.6%

The total volume of online searches conducted in the U.S. increased by 22 percent year-over-year in July, reaching more than 4.8 billion. Market consolidation continued as the top six search engines - Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Time Warner (AOL), Ask Jeeves, and InfoSpace - accounted for 99.4 percent of all searches, up from 98.5 percent in July 2004.

MSN-Microsoft saw the highest search volume gain among any of the top search engines, rising 30 percent from July 2004, accounting for 744 million domestic searches.

The popularity of search toolbars has leveled off during the course of the past year, but usage remains high. In July, 11 percent of all domestic searches were conducted via toolbars, up from 8 percent in July 2004. Yahoo! remains the most popular toolbar, serving as the starting point for 51 percent of all toolbar searches executed in July. Yahoo! toolbars processed more than 282 million searches during the month, a 74-percent increase over the previous year.

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Blog search engines try to block fakes

2005-08-19T04:56:00.000-07:00

Fake blogs created for advertising purposes are causing headaches for search engines, with Google's Blogger accused of being the most common source of splogs

Blog search engines are struggling to block the increasing number of blogs that contain spam, commonly known as splogs.

Mark Cuban, the owner of a blog search engine IceRocket, said on Monday that spam occurs in "monstrous proportions" in blogs. Google's free Blogger service is a common source of splogs and spammers are automating the creation of blogs using this service, said Cuban in a blog posting.

"Blogger is by far the worst offender," he said. "It's fast, it's easy, it's free and it can be automated. So blogs are coming at us left and right. We are killing off thousands a day, but they keep on coming."

Cuban warned that splog detection algorithms are not perfect, so innocent bloggers are increasingly likely to find their sites blocked, particularly if they use the Blogger service.

"If you are an individual blogger whose blog is hosted on blogspot.com, every day the chances of you being excluded from icerocket.com's, and other search engines' indexes increases. It's not just blogspot.com, pretty much 90-plus percent of blogs hosted on .info sites are splogs as well," Cuban claimed.

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Amazon.com's A9 search engine unveils photo-mapping service

2005-08-18T05:03:00.000-07:00

PALO ALTO (AP) -- Hoping to become a more popular Internet destination, a small search engine owned by Web retailer Amazon.com Inc. is testing a mapping service that will display street-level photos of the city blocks surrounding a requested address, including San Diego.

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Google Launches Adsense Blog

2005-08-17T04:46:00.000-07:00

Learn more about adsense, tips and more http://adsense.blogspot.com/

China's Internet boom

2005-08-15T09:25:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! Inc.'s China Web site warns users they're not allowed to post content that "divulges state secrets, subverts the government or undermines national unity." Yahoo's India site has no such prohibition.

Undeterred by China's restrictions, Yahoo, owner of the world's most-visited Web portal, last week paid $1 billion for a 40 percent stake in China's biggest online commerce firm, Alibaba.com.
Yahoo invested $120 million in a Chinese search engine in 2003. In 2004, it started an auction site in China, where total online revenue hit $1.1 billion.

India, an English-speaking democracy that allows freer flow of information, had online revenue of just $93 million.

"It does seem ironic that India, with its democratic government and free press, is so far behind China in developing its Internet market," says David Wolf, managing director of Wolf Group Asia, a Beijing-based regional consulting firm.

"The simple reason is that China has the infrastructure and India doesn't," he said.

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Search Engine Marketing Companies, Mamma.com and InfoSpace, Sign Agreement

2005-08-11T07:27:00.000-07:00

Montreal, Canada - (via THE HOSTING NEWS) - August 10, 2005 - Mamma.com Inc., a leader in Internet search and online advertising, has announced an agreement with InfoSpace Inc. that will provide Mamma.com's search advertisers with distribution on all InfoSpace properties, including Dogpile, WebCrawler, MetaCrawler and InfoSpace.com.

InfoSpace will also provide distributed search results to be placed on the Mamma.com search engine beginning August 1, 2005. In the terms of the deal, InfoSpace will supply search results from some of the leading search engines on the web.

The distribution of InfoSpace paid links on Mamma.com is expected to increase the number of paid clicks to InfoSpace's paid search distribution network and increase search revenues for both companies. Mamma.com's metasearch engine, www.mamma.com, has a unique audience of approximately 2.3 million users (Comscore Media Metrics May 2005).

Guy Faure, President and CEO of Mamma.com commented on the new partnership, ''Mamma.com and InfoSpace have had successful technology partnerships in the past, and we are looking forward to beginning a new type of partnership where we can create revenue and user satisfaction together. Providing both targeted paid search results to appropriately answer commercial searches and returning premier web search results from some of the top engines will generate value to our loyal users.''

Richard Pelly, InfoSpace's Vice President - Search Distribution Sales and Strategic Partnerships added, ''We are very excited to commence this agreement with Mamma.com. Mamma.com's metasearch engine provides a distinct distribution channel that will help us extend the reach of our distributed search solution.''

For further information on Mamma.com please visit: www.mamma.com.

To learn more about InfoSpace and their family of Internet properties please visit: www.infospace.com.

Source

Yahoo Expands Its Search Engine Index

2005-08-10T07:42:00.000-07:00

SAN FRANCISCO - In a major expansion, Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) said Monday that its online search engine index now spans more than 20 billion Web documents and images, nearly double the material scanned by rival Google Inc.

Yahoo's expansion doesn't necessarily mean it produces more useful results than Google, which has long been considered the Internet's most comprehensive database.

But the breakthrough gives the Sunnyvale-based company the bragging rights to a widely watched measurement for assessing the power of an Internet search engine.

Yahoo said its index, boosted by a recent upgrade, covers 20.8 billion online "objects," comprised of about 19.2 billion documents and 1.6 billion images.

By comparison, Google said it tracks 11.3 billion objects. That figure consists of the nearly 8.2 billion Web pages that Google proudly touts on its home page and 2.1 billion images, with the remainder of material coming from its group discussions.

Until Monday, Yahoo hadn't publicly disclosed the size of its search index, but industry estimates had placed the figure somewhere between 6 billion and 8 billion.

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Howard Stern Sues Google

2005-08-09T09:25:00.000-07:00

Howard claims the Google adwords have been over charging him. The over charge is as high as $8 over his request cap. Read this article below:

Howard Stern Suing Google AdWords

MarketingVox has an interesting rundown on a lawsuit filed by Howard Stern against Google claiming that Google AdWord’s daily budgeting does not work correctly and credits are not given to ad campaigns which Google serves over the desired limit. Google AdWords forecasting, rankings, and budgeting have long been a problem for advertisers and agencies who are trying to stick to a set budget on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Looks like complaining to Google is not just something that small firms do and Google is also ignoring their larger advertisers (or larger named) advertisers who are having problems with the AdWords system.

MarketingVox reports :

Howard Stern and an industrial printing firm launched a lawsuit against Google last week, alleging that the search engine giant fails to live up to its promises regarding the daily budget limits that AdWords users can place over their accounts. The plaintiffs are seeking class action status. They say that Google’s daily budget limits are misrepresented and that Google “continues to bill plaintiffs and all other members of the class in excess of the daily budgets,” creating in effect a monthly budget limit made up of the sum of the daily budget multiplied by the number of days in the month.

Google does indicate that it will refund customers charged more than 120 percent of a daily budget, but the lawsuit gives examples that allege regular violation of this policy, with one example campaign running from between 121 and 162 percent of overdelivery, all charged to one of the plaintiffs.

Being that so many businesses build their marketing budgets around Google AdWords, you’d think Google would be able to get their daily budgeting tool in order. TV, Radio, and other traditional “low tech” media do not seem to have much trouble with doing so - neither does Yahoo.

Story posted on Search Engine Journal

If you visit threadwatch you can read how others have had the same done to them. But, they claim they received a refund a few days later.

Search engine click fraud as high as 30 per cent

2005-08-07T16:00:00.000-07:00

Research recently published in MarketingExperiments.com's online publication, The Marketing Experiments Journal, concludes that up to 29.5 percent of paid search traffic may be fraudulent. That;s news which is unlikely to please advertisers who have turned to the increasingly popular type of online advertising as part of their marketing strategy.
"From our research, we found that it is unlikely an individual committing click fraud by clicking an ad over and over will go undetected by Google," said Flint McGlaughlin, director of MEC labs. "But our research also shows that when more sophisticated systems and software are used, only a small percentage of the fraud is detected, with fraud increasing proportionate to the bid price."

The click fraud research brief can be found at www.MarketingExperiments.com and outlines what click fraud is, how significant of a problem it is and how it can successfully be avoided.

The experiment was conducted in conjunction with Los Angeles-based Clicks2Customers.com and focused on three pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns running during a 10-day period in 2005. Duplicate clicks were determined by comparing IP addresses, language, browser settings, referring URL, time of click, operating system, browser plug-ins and country of origin.

"Our random sample of PPC campaigns uncovered as much as 29.5 percent PPC fraud and showed that Google was able to account for and credit only a tiny portion of those fraudulent charges," McGlaughlin said. "Whether it is click fraud or the lesser known impression fraud, these fraudulent clicks can cause a lot of damage to advertisers because it drains their budgets. Companies should be aware of how big of a problem it really is and be equipped to more aptly detect it."

MarketingExperiments.com is an online research laboratory that determines which online strategies and tactics really work in Internet marketing. Results of its experiments are published for free online in The Marketing Experiments Journal.

Source

Should Google Pay Interest on Delayed AdSense Payments?

2005-08-05T07:10:00.000-07:00

A WebmasterWorld thread named Google has to pay interest for adsense payments asks the question, shouldn't Google pay interest on the delay of payment for AdSense?

Most of the members in the thread say no, they should not. And I agree. Google probably doesn't get full payment (including charge-backs) until 30 days later anyway. Plus in the agreement, it specifically says that payments will be sent up to 30 days after the month where they have been earned.

This is part of doing business. A business renders services, then invoices for them, then possibly 30 days later gets paid. No interest accrued.

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Yahoo offers tips on optimization

2005-08-04T06:00:00.000-07:00

Optimizing your site for natural search can be a great way to draw more traffic to your web site.

Any given Web search on a site such as Yahoo! can turn up thousands, sometimes millions, of results. So if you are trying to grow your business online, you will want to structure your site to improve your rankings in algorithmic (non-sponsored) search results. Consider implementing the search engine optimization tips below to help you achieve this goal.

Picking Target Keywords
Search engines look for keywords when scanning the Web for content in order to show relevant results. Thus, it's important to determine which terms your potential customers are using as they search, and make sure they are sprinkled liberally throughout your site. Two important things to consider when building this list are:

Target keywords should be at least two words long. The majority of sites usually are relevant for a single word, which creates more competition. Having additional words will increase your chances of success.
Colleagues, friends and customers may have some insight, so brainstorm with them when compiling keywords. They may have ideas that you haven't considered.
Positioning Keywords on Your Site
Search engine crawlers will scan your web pages for appropriate keywords, so it's important to place them where they're easy to find. The most effective locations to place your keywords are:

HTML title tags - Your site's title, which appears at the top of the browser window, is the first piece that crawlers will read. Write the titles of your headlines around your top two or three phrases.
META tags - META tags deliver information to the search engines for ranking purposes, explain the web page's content, and store keywords for search engines, which helps in the ranking process.
Headlines - Include your target keywords in the headlines of your pages. Search engine crawlers scan pages from top to bottom, so the headline will be one of the first things they detect.

Page Layouts
The layout of your web page also can affect a search engine's ability to find keywords. Search engines scan pages differently than humans do, so what appears normal to one may not appear that way to the other. Here are two things you can do to make your page layouts more conducive to natural searches:

If you use tables, simplify the structure to keep your keywords higher on the page--while human visitors may see your keywords, tables may make keywords appear lower on the page to search engines.
Make sure that your keywords appear in text--search engines can't read JavaScript or text that’s embedded in images.

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Yahoo launches shopping data you can add to your site!

2005-08-03T05:28:00.000-07:00

Use Yahoo! Shopping Data on Your Site

We're excited to announce the Yahoo! Shopping API, a new product that enables Web site owners and software developers to use Yahoo! comparison shopping data in their sites and applications.

Using the Shopping API, developers can create applications that search the Yahoo! database of millions of products and thousands of merchants, displaying prices and enabling searches in new and innovative ways.

With the Product Search API, you can search by keyword; limit your search to a specific merchant, price range or product category, and filter merchants according to their Yahoo! User ratings.

The Price Comparison Grid API gives developers access to millions of products offered by multiple merchants, returning base price, tax and shipping info and total price (based on zip code).

If you're a software developer, you can get the all the information on using the Shopping API on the Yahoo! Developer Network site. If you're a user of Yahoo! Shopping and you want to see how third parties are connecting with Yahoo! Shopping, stay tuned. We'll report back soon with examples of applications and sites that use Yahoo! Shopping data.

Jeffrey McManus
Director, Yahoo! Developer Network

Number of blogs is doubling every five months

2005-08-02T07:37:00.000-07:00

LONDON - A blog is born every second, according to research from web tracking company Technorati, bringing the number of weblogs it is tracking up from 7.8m in March to 14.2m at the end of July.

The US company's latest 'State of the Blogosphere' report claims that the number of blogs is doubling every five months, with around 80,000 new weblogs being created every day.

The research revealed that 13% of all blogs tracked by Technorati are updated weekly or more regularly, and 55% of all new bloggers are still posting blogs three months after they started.

Free blogging services are also growing at a fast rate, such as those provided by MSN, Blogger, LiveJournal and AOL, and the use of software to create blogs such as WordPress and Movable Type has increased.

Technorati acts like a search engine that tracks what is occurring in the blogosphere, the name given to the realm where blogs exist.

Last month, research from online monitoring firm Hitwise signified the growing importance of bloggers by revealing that one in every 200 web visits is to a blog website.

The growing number of blogs has also seen the power of blogs grow as well. Bloggers are increasingly breaking stories before the mainstream media or being used to exert pressure on the mainstream media.

Read more...

Yahoo! Yammys to honor online video through contest

2005-08-02T06:56:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! Search has issued a call for entries into The Yammys - the first annual Yahoo! Video Search Awards, sponsored by Casio Inc. The contest aims to find and recognize the type of online video content that continues to make Yahoo! Video Search, http://video.search.yahoo.com, one of the most popular sites on the Web to find interesting, relevant, and fun video content. To enter a video for consideration, consumers should visit www.yahoo.com and search for 'The Yammys.' Submissions will be accepted beginning July 28 and ending August 17 at midnight. The Yammys Grand Prize winner will receive a red-carpet premiere in their hometown, to showcase their winning video with all their friends and family, along with a plasma TV and DVD player.

Jenny McCarthy, star of UPN's Bad Girls Guide and author of Belly Laughs, a New York Times Best Seller, Kelly Monaco, star on General Hospital and recent winner of ABC's top-rated hit Dancing with the Stars, and Pauly Shore, comedic talent and star of new reality show Minding The Store on TBS, will serve as celebrity judges for The Yammys. Categories include Bloopers, Pets, Road Trips, Office Humor, and a catch-all "I Can't Believe It!"

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Search Engines Differ More than You Think

2005-08-02T05:59:00.000-07:00

It's easy to think of search engines as black boxes that are essentially all alike, with Yahoo, Google, Ask Jeeves and MSN Search all agreeing and returning similar results for just about any query. New research shows that this idea is just dead wrong, however. Search engine result overlap is actually quite small, and shrinking, according to a new study by released today by Dogpile and researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and Penn State University.

And this lack of overlap was seen in both organic search listings as well as sponsored listings, suggesting that there's still plenty of opportunities for search marketers to gain a significant increase in exposure despite increasing competition.

Read more...

Read the PDF

Ask Jeeves to launch pay-per-click text ad service

2005-07-29T04:19:00.000-07:00

The huge economic success of Google is based on the fact that the company managed to develop a new source of revenue replacing the failed banner ads of the dot com crash.
Inspired by GoTo/Overture Google developed its popular AdWords ad system, which generates text ads of relevance to the content of search queries.
At the moment there are two major players in this field, the above mentioned Google and Overture (now under the Yahoo! brand).
However, Microsoft is preparing its own system, and now Online Media Daily reports that Ask Jeeves is developing its own sponsored listings.

Read more...

MSN gives away search screen saver

2005-07-28T08:15:00.000-07:00

The basic objective of search engine companies is to deliver as many search engine result pages as possible. The reason: This means that they can serve you more pay-per-click text ads, and get some more revenue.
Hence the need to lock you in to their service. MSN has delivered a new solution to the problem.
You can now download a free screensaver for Windows that can be personalized with background photos, weather information, RSS feed headlines, information about your HotMail account, MSN messages and more. And yes, there is also a search form for the MSN search engine.
What bothers us, though, is that you need to install the MSN Search Toolbar with Windows Desktop Search before you install the screensaver. This is much more than we have bargained for.

Read more...

New MSN Screen Saver With Search & RSS Integration

2005-07-27T07:53:00.000-07:00

Need a screensaver? The new MSN Screen Saver puts a search box on display, plus shows you RSS feeds, photos from your desktop and more. Seem odd to have a search box in your screen saver? Yes and no. It's odd in that if you go to use your computer, you want your screen saver to go away. But it's smart in that if you like the other things the screen saver offers then realize you need to search for something, there's a search box -- and MSN's search box -- ready to go. Yahoo and Google don't offer screen savers that I know about. I'm sure they'll come. More details on the MSN Search Blog: MSN Screensaver with Search & RSS

Read More...

Rumors: Ask Jeeves to Launch PPC Engine

2005-07-27T07:48:00.000-07:00

Reportedly, Ask Jeeves' paid search will look similar to Google's system. It primarily will be based on keyword bidding, but with some measure of relevance, such as click-through rates, factored into the advertiser's ultimate cost. The minimum bid will reportedly start at 5 cents. Ask Jeeves' sponsored listings likely will co-exist with Google's, at least for the time being. Google's contract to power sponsored listings on Ask Jeeves doesn't expire until 2007.

Read more...

Google™ Code Jam 2005

2005-07-26T05:53:00.000-07:00

It's back! The Google™ Code Jam 2005 is now offering the best coders in the world a chance to compete for $155,000! Have you got what it takes? Can you take the pressure? Know how to solve problems? Know algorithms? If you answered yes to one or more of the above, then the Google™ Code Jam 2005 is right up your alley. Join coders from around the world in this intense competition that requires all your mind has to offer. Not only will you be in your glory of coding, but there are prizes for it too! It's more than just $155,000 but a chance to work for the hottest tech company, Google.

Read more...

Yahoo Health Blogs Launched

2005-07-19T21:02:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! as launched a range of interesting health blogs, covering topics including yoga, nutrition, diabetes, depression, cholesterol, breast cancer and asthma. The blogs are written by experts in their field, and include an RSS feed, comments (although Yahoo! registration is required) and permalink options, although the branding is simple and generic across the various blogs under the Yahoo! Health Beta banner.

Steve Rubel suggests that theses new blogs could be part of a strategy by Yahoo! to build their own consumer blog network, however comparing the two is like comparing chalk and cheese. Whilst the Yahoo! blogs have the ability to build traffic through leveraging the Yahoo! brand name, posting a couple of times a week doesn’t normally make for a lot of repeat viewing.

From Rubel : “See a trend here? I think I smell a strategy. First Yahoo! News gets blogs, then Health, Travel, Autos, etc. etc. Look out Weblogs Inc. I am sure Tech blogs will be next.”

Read more..

Microsoft sues over Google hire

2005-07-19T18:07:00.000-07:00

Opening a new chapter in its rivalry with Google, Microsoft on Tuesday sued the search giant and a former Microsoft executive who has been tapped by Google to run its China operations.

The suit was filed in a Washington state court against Google and Kai-Fu Lee, who until Monday was the corporate vice president of Microsoft's Interactive Services Division.

Google said earlier Tuesday that Lee was joining the company and would head up a new research effort in China.

"Accepting such a position with a direct Microsoft competitor like Google violates the narrow non-competition promise Lee made when he was hired as an executive," Microsoft said in its lawsuit, which was seen by CNET News.com. "Google is fully aware of Lee's promises to Microsoft, but has chosen to ignore them, and has encouraged Lee to violate them."

Read More....

The International Association of SEO Professionals

2005-07-17T13:36:00.000-07:00

An International SEO first: Creation of a Search Engine Professionals Organization. Dedication to ethics, standards and creation of exams for International certification to be held in Hong Kong.

(PRWEB) July 17, 2005 -- The newly formed International Association of Search Engine Optimization Professionals (IASEOP) will meet in November in Hong Kong. The three day event will bring together hundreds of practitioners worldwide to develop membership, ethical and accreditation standards for SEO professionals and to elect officers for the organization.

The conference hopes to create landmark measures for SEO qualifications and acceptable standards of practice. Speakers are invited to submit papers for consideration on any aspect of SEO for its two-hour, four-hour and day-long training sessions.

Newcomers to the field are welcome to attend all seminars and will have priority for any and all certification exams developed.

SEO basics, Advanced SEO techniques, Marketing Strategies, SEO tools, Publicity Management, Web Analytics, Feed Syndication, Blogging SEO Methods,and dozens of topics are open for consideration.

Complete remission of conference fees, and travel allowances are available for selected speakers.

Read more...

SEO and Other Small Business Marketing Techniques Discussed On New Business Radio

2005-07-15T05:01:00.000-07:00

(PRWEB) July 15, 2005 -- Bob Cefail and Laura Betterly, Chairman and CEO of InTouch Media Group (ITOU.OB), have just launched “The Profit Doctors” a business related call-in radio show. The shows premise is quite simple. Bob and Laura attempt to cure what ails a company’s profits. Callers are able to call-in and describe the different problems they are having with their company. Bob and Laura, both of which have a wealth of experience in the world of business, tackle problems related to finance, sales, marketing, and product or service delivery.

The show’s sponsor, is www.Adwordstraining.org, which is a web site that is focused on helping any type of business succeed with Google Adwords paid search advertising. Each week www.Adwordstraining.org supplies a free copy of its’ well known CD series titled Google Adwords Boot Camp for callers who supply unique business tips that they have employed successfully.

The show is aired live every Wednesday from 6:00 to 7:00 pm, in the Tampa Bay area. Callers can reach the show by dialing (866) 826-1340. One can also listen to the internet simulcast by going to www.tantalk1340.com or read about the show by going to www.theprofitdoctors.net. If you have additional questions about the show please call Bob Cefail at (727) 465 0935 or email him at bob@drcinc.

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NeboWeb Launches SEO Scorecard™ Version 2.0 - its Free Search Engine Ranking and Website Comparison Tool

2005-07-14T10:42:00.000-07:00

Atlanta, GA (PRWEB via PR Web Direct) July 13, 2005 -- NeboWeb, an Atlanta Internet Marketing company, announced the release of SEO Scorecard™ 2.0, the latest version of its proprietary Internet marketing and Search Engine Ranking application.

Marketers use NeboWeb's SEO Scorecard to see how well their website ranks in the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL Search. Businesses are now empowered to see how their competitors' websites rank compared to their own websites.

One new feature included in the release of SEO Scorecard 2.0 is the ability to have monthly reports sent to users via email. Although email addresses are not required to run SEO Scorecard on the NeboWeb site, users are given the option to include their email address for free monthly reporting. Other features include displaying the Google PageRank, Meta Tag checks, Keyword Density and other valuable information to aid the website owner in forming an Internet marketing strategy.

"We're releasing this new version due to the overwhelming response from marketing executives and website owners," Brian Easter, CEO of NeboWeb, explains. "When we launched SEO Scorecard 1.0, thousands of companies used it to determine their rankings in the search engines and to help define their objectives for search engine marketing. By giving users the ability to benchmark where they are today in the major search engines – and where their competition ranks – SEO Scorecard helps businesses create an effective eMarketing strategy."

Read more...

Try it

Google updates its video search. Due to demand.

2005-07-14T05:32:00.000-07:00

Google Video searches a rapidly growing database of network TV shows and uploaded material. We show text and picture info for everything, which is great when you want to know how often they mention cereal or Superman on Seinfeld, for instance. For some material, you can also play the actual video. That's how I know that this guy Eric has a cool ca t.

Read more...

Check out our new update to Yahoo! Desktop Search.

2005-07-14T05:26:00.000-07:00

We're excited to introduce three new improvements:
Support for Mozilla Thunderbird email client: Indexes all email and attachments in Thunderbird. (Read what Jeremy thinks of this.)
Simplified UI and tabs: Your feedback was very helpful. Please keep your comments coming either on our message board or with our feedback form
Reduced download size: Most of you just need to search emails, MS Office docs, PDFs and other common filetypes. So we've made the initial download much faster by splitting out support for the large number of less common filetypes into a separate expansion pack. You can download the free expansion pack at any time, or YDS will let you know when you've encountered a filetype that requires it.(NOTE: if you had version 1.0 or 1.1 of YDS, you will still need to install the expansion pack even though the older versions included all the filetype support. Sorry for the inconvenience this time, but we'll find a way to make this unnecessary for future upgrades.)

Arnold Schwarzenegger was visiting Yahoo.....

2005-07-12T17:07:00.000-07:00

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Hundreds of protesters greeted Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger Monday afternoon when he visited Yahoo! headquarters in Sunnyvale.

A group of 200 protestors with signs, masks and chants gathered at the corner of First and Matilda streets in Sunnyvale.

We're chasing Arnold, because the reality is what he's partied to and his colleagues is just un-American and un-Democratic," said Randy Sekany, a San Jose firefighter.

It didn't matter to the protester that the Yahoo! speech was part of an influential speakers program and not a fundraiser.

The protestors don't believe this governor can participate in a nonpolitical event, NBC11's Garvin Thomas reported.

Read more..

Google Toolbar for firefox ..ready for download!

2005-07-07T16:55:00.000-07:00

You can now download the google tool bar for the FireFox browser. Click this link to be taken to it.

Features include:

AutoLink (US only)
Turn street addresses into links to online maps

AutoFill
Automatically fill out forms for faster online shopping

WordTranslator
Translate English words into other languages

and much more.

Google Toolbar for Firefox

2005-07-04T06:35:00.000-07:00

Google will be releasing a version of our IE Toolbar for Firefox on July 7th.

It will work with Firefox 1.0+
It will work on Win2k/XP, MacOS X 10.2, and Linux 8.0+
It has pretty much the same features as the latest IE toolbar except
of course for things like the Popup Blocker

AOL launches Video search

2005-06-30T18:22:00.000-07:00

Aol launches AOL seach. Check it out and give it a try. Search for your favorite TV shows and more.

Google Earth Closed... At Least Temporarily

2005-06-30T18:20:00.000-07:00

Apparently, even Google's web servers can be overloaded by too much traffic, or at least by people wanting to download the new hot Google product.

Evidently, too many Google Earth download attempts have caused Google to suspend the ability to do so... for the time being anyway. When users try to access the Google Earth download page, they are greeted with a picture of a the Earth taken at night (signifying a black-out?) and a message that says:

Google Earth downloads temporarily delayed

Thanks for your interest in Google Earth, but we're sorry we can't offer you a download right now. As you know, Google Earth is in beta, and we're still building out our ability to take on new users. We're making good progress, and expect to be able to accept new downloads shortly, so we recommend you check back daily at earth.google.com. We hope to be able to welcome you and other new planet surfers soon.

We appreciate your patience,

The Google Earth Team

Yahoo Launches MyWeb 2.0

2005-06-29T05:50:00.000-07:00

Yahoo launches their "Social Search Engine"

You can create your own personal searchable web
Tag and save content that matters to you.

Connect to friends and share what you know.

Search or browse to discover what your community knows
Discover what the world has tagged and shared
Browse the 9,293 pages and 4,906 tags that have been shared

Google Earth - Free Download

2005-06-28T07:54:00.000-07:00

Google Earth - Free Download
Lots of news today from Google, they also are now allowing people to download the Google Earth program for free. Inside Google pretty much broke the news first (even though many other sites were under embargo). In addition, Inside Google has the most detailed write up in terms of screen captures and walk throughs. The Search Engine Watch article was written by Chris Sherman and is named Google Earth Flies Free, which then Danny Sullivan blogged on this morning.

You can download Google earth here.

Google Video To Launch Actual Video Today

2005-06-27T05:38:00.000-07:00

John Battelle reports that Google Video today will begin offering user contributed videos that have been uploaded since April (see Google Wants Your Video). In addition, users will be able to view the actual video within search results. At the moment, the service only displays content gathered mostly from television resources and only still clips are displayed, not video.

John doesn't specifically say whether it was Google itself that confirmed the news to him or rather a third party contact. Google is neither directly quoted or cited in his report.

Dirson left a comment on John's blog pointing at a Dutch blog that appears to have spotted an accidental post from the official Google Blog about the new features (and here, with Dirson comment and reprint here).

Since Google itself has leaked some of the news, we can also confirm we've been briefed about the new features that are planned to be formally announced today.

Chris Sherman will be bringing further details in SearchDay when Google lifts the embargo for those who have been prebriefed or gives us the go ahead directly to publish more.

Google isn't the only service to show user contributed video, of course. Our past article, Yahoo Launches Video Search Prototype, New Media RSS Format, covers Yahoo Video. It gathers content from crawling the web (unlike Google Video) and has an RSS feeding mechanism.

SingingFish from AOL has long accepted contributions and feed content, as well. Blinkx TV is another service that gathers by crawling and contributions. See Gary's past post, A Look At Other Video Search Tools, for more about these.

The key difference in what Google Video will offer compared to other services is inline playback. Rather than having to depend on having a particular plug-in for a particular video format -- which your browser will often annoyingly opens in a separate window -- Google Video will provide its own lightweight plug-in to display video right within the results.

Microsoft's IE 7.0 to Provide RSS Support

2005-06-25T05:45:00.000-07:00

Dean Hachamovitch – General Manager, Longhorn Browsing and RSS Technologies - and
Amar Gandhi – Group Program Manager - use Gnomedex to provide a first look at IE 7.0. As part of their live demonstration, they reveal that Microsoft's next browser will include full RSS support.

The new browser will allow you to preview the RSS feed of the page you are viewing, before you decide with to subscribe to that feed.

Subscribing to a site's feed is extremely easy, using the same "+" button that you would use to add a bookmark.

The summer release of Longhorn Beta 1.0 will include some of the RSS experiences that will come in the full launch. eWeek has more details and Rubel points to a video demo.

AOL.com Beta Site Unveiled

2005-06-21T17:06:00.000-07:00

America Online's future unofficially began today, with the beta launch of its new AOL.com portal marking the turning point between its subscription-based business model of the past and its ad-supported future.

The beta site is available for some users at AOL.com, or can be accessed via beta.aol.com.

The company's moves leading up to this launch have been met with cautious optimism by media buyers, who generally are interested in what AOL.com can offer, but want to wait and see how things play out.

The company has a host of interactive ad units up its sleeve, but those are not expected to be launched until the final release of the portal in late July. At that time, the company will also unveil other features of the portal, including three customizable start pages -- the default content-packed start page, a sparse, graphics-free page of user-defined RSS feeds, and a video-heavy portal for broadband users.

Broadband content will be key both to bringing and keeping new users, and providing rich media and video ad opportunities. AOL will also use its programming savvy to tailor parts of the site to its core demographic of 25 to 49 year old adults, while catering to a younger audience through AIM, according to David Liu, general manager of AOL.com.

"What we'll have is like an interactive TV channel with unlimited shelf space," Liu said.

The page of news feeds is part of what AOL is calling its "LiveWeb" strategy, which is an effort to more tightly integrate AOL.com's content with the broader Web, and bring outside content into the AOL.com user's experience. The default home page will include a LiveWeb module that links to search, blogs, and other community areas on the Web.

"We're trying to give people a view of what's the best stuff on the Web, and show them some things that were not part of AOL traditionally," Liu said.

Leading up to the launch, AOL has been revamping its advertising opportunities for months. It has been standardizing all of its sites on a single ad-friendly media player since April. It made some advertiser-focused changes to AOL Search in January.

When the site goes fully live next month, AOL will launch an expansive promotional campaign, taking place mostly online. Elements include rich media and video ads across several online properties, as well as a viral marketing campaign, though Liu would not divulge many details.

"Every ad unit that we're selling -- that's what we'll be buying on other sites," Liu said. "We believe in the medium."

AOL Gets Ready to Launch Free Content

2005-06-20T10:37:00.000-07:00

I've had some interesting conversations with the execs over at AOL.com, and it's clear they are getting ready to go on the offensive.

At SFGate.com, you can get an overview of some of the things AOL has planned, which mostly surrounds its plans to make a lot of its content available for free.

Starting Tuesday, a test version of the new portal will be accessible via a link at aol.com. A limited number of features will be available at first, with more added in the coming months.

AOL believes that creating a free portal will expand its audience beyond just subscribers. Online advertising will provide the revenue.

AOL's plans include heavy promotion of video and music to go along with a snazzy new look.

Visitors will be able to watch music videos, exclusive concerts and a Web-only reality show in which the participants compete for a recording contract. AOL's Singingfish multimedia search engine will be prominently featured.

AOL has no plans to launch its own search engine index, but will be refining its smart box and clustering technology, with a new look search interface due around August.

Google's Site Targeting Beta Now Available to all AdWords Advertisers

2005-06-20T04:23:00.000-07:00

Google has expanded the Site Targeting beta it launched back in April of this year. The feature enables advertisers to target their ads to thousands of specific content sites across the Google Network.

According to Google's Barry Schnitt, "As a result of today's launch, all advertisers can now launch site targeted campaigns, increasing the competition for ad space on websites in the Google Network. Greater competition among ads will provide users more useful, more diverse, and more relevant ads for users, while enhancing the revenue opportunity for AdSense publishers."

Site Targeting offers placement on a CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions) basis instead of the usual CPC (cost-per-click).

Do You Need Google Sitemaps?

2005-06-19T07:10:00.000-07:00

"It makes total sense to push new links to users quickly. We don't want to wait on the engine to deliver results - we want to get content into the engine faster. Whenever it's possible, we opt to push content rather than have it pulled. That gives us a more interactive experience with Google...", says Marshall Simmonds, Vice President Enterprise Search Marketing New York Times.

Google Sitemaps, a new tool being offered by the Google search engine, allows webmasters to inform and direct the Google website crawlers. Google hopes to “expand our coverage of the web and improve the time to inclusion in our index” by offering this new free tool. “By placing a Sitemap-formatted file on your webserver, you enable our crawlers to find out what pages are present and which have recently changed, and to crawl your site accordingly.”

There are two steps to participating in the Google Sitemaps program:

Generate your sitemap file in the correct format.

Update your sitemap when you make changes to your website.

Generating a sitemap isn’t that difficult. According to Google, “There are a number of methods you can use to create a Sitemap. You can use Google's Sitemap Generator downloadable from Google Code- it's a simple script that generates Sitemaps for basic use cases… If the Sitemap Generator will not work for your site structure, we encourage you to write your own script for generating Sitemaps and share it with others.” There are many different scripts now available by third-parties, in different programming languages. Currently, the only ‘official’ script from Google is available in Python.

For more specific information about Google Sitemaps, take a look at the Sitemaps FAQ.

The Google Sitemaps tool doesn’t come without controversy. It’s currently being discussed at length at many webmaster-related and search engine marketing-related forums, including WebmasterWorld, as well as the Search Engine Watch forums. Some say that the Google Sitemaps tool is a welcome tool and that it will help get more pages crawled. While this is true for dynamic sites and sites that have had trouble getting their pages indexed, it might not be a useful tool for every webmaster. For example, a website owner with less than 100 pages of content might not benefit at all from using the Google Sitemaps tool. If a website is designed well with easily crawlable internal links, then there’s really no reason to use the Google Sitemaps tool. The pages will be easily found by all of the web crawlers.

Not only will the Google Sitemap tool allow website owners to get more of their web pages crawled, the sitemap that’s generated will allow Google to know how often a web page has been updated (or if a page has been updated). Google already has mechanisms in place to determine the freshness of a web page. Some website owners go to great lengths to update their web pages on a regular basis. And Google already does a good job with recognizing that freshness. If a website owner is to begin participating in the Google Sitemaps program, then it appears that there would need to be a commitment towards keeping the sitemap up to date—a new file would need to be generated every time a page on the site is updated. For some, that can be burdensome.

From what I can see, the Google Sitemaps tool can be useful for some while burdensome for other site owners. Website owners need to be cautious about making a commitment to the Google Sitemaps program. If you begin creating sitemap files for the Google Sitemaps program, then continue updating those files on a regular basis. If a website is already being crawled on a regular basis and the pages are being updated in the Google index, there might not be any need to participate in the program.

Who Do You Link to? New SEO Tool

2005-06-19T06:46:00.000-07:00

Many people get stuck in the sandbox because they can't get high quality links.

The solution is to keep churning out mediocre content and build more junk links, maybe also rent a few decent ones. Sure aging can have an effect, but a large part of the ineffective SEO problem might rest within the fundamental techniques being used.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein
Many webmasters are stingy with their links, afraid to link out to other sites. Some people view sending traffic away to other sites as losing your visitors, but linking sorta works on a karma like system.

If you don't link out to anybody and your content is not amazing then most of the best sites are not going to want to link to you. Why should they?

Certain sites are not going to want to link to your site no matter what, but you can still work your way into their community by linking at them. As you cite relevent and useful resources your site becomes more linkable. More of the sites you want to links from will send you some link love.

Linking out freely and regularly is one of the cheapest and fastest forms of marketing available. Many new webmasters drop the ball on the concept because they feel they need all the links to point their way.

In the spirit of linking, I am linking at Jim Boykin's new SEO tool, which tracks who you are linking at: Forward Links (beta). Nice touch on the beta name Jim.

Currently the tool only shows the first 100 outbound links it comes acrost.

I think Jim might further explore the neighborhood concept next week, during his WMW speech. Google Touchgraph also does a good example of showing the neighborhood concept.

Are there any good sites I should be linking to which I have not yet linked to? If so feel free to mention them below.

Google To Offer E-Payment Service

2005-06-18T17:26:00.000-07:00

Google Inc. plans to offer this year an electronic-payment service that may compete with EBay Inc.'s PayPal unit, it was reported Friday.

Besides potentially increasing competition with the online auction site, the service could help Google, Mountain View, Calif., diversify its revenue sources, The Wall Street Journal Online said. About 99 percent of the $3.2 billion in revenue the Internet-search company took in last year was from online advertising.

Quoting people familiar with the matter, the Wall Street Journal said the Google service could have similarities with PayPal, which handles transactions between consumers and online merchants. Most of PayPal's business comes from EBay auctions, but the parent company has been trying to expand its use to other websites.

Companies make money through electronic-payment services by taking a commission on each transaction. PayPal accounted for 23 percent of EBay's revenue in the first quarter, or $233.1 million, the Wall Street Journal said