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My 2 featured articles for the week ending April 15:

Archived blogs for the week of April 11, 2005

829 - Apr. 15, 2005 - 8.41 AM EST

Yahoo News refreshes its aggregator

Yahoo News has been busy refreshing its news aggregator, which is now available in beta form, and is aimed to compete directly with Google News.

The revamped Yahoo News streamlines the site's interface to pack in more headlines and pictures, along with adding support for user-added news sources via RSS feeds.

Unlike Google, which has even begun including blog postings as news, Yahoo only pulls headlines from a limited number of major media outlets.

But to make up for the smaller pool of content, Yahoo members can add headlines from any RSS-enabled Web site, which appear in the "My Sources" tab.

Posted on Businessblog™

828 - Apr. 14, 2005 - 7.29 PM EST

Google builds video file transfer program

Google yesterday made available a program that lets users upload and store digital videos on its system.

This new program, whose existence was disclosed by Google Co-founder and President for Products Larry Page last week, is aimed at anyone interested in making their digital videos available to a broad audience, according to a statement from the Mountain View, California company.

"We're actually going to start taking video submissions from people, and we're not quite sure what we're going to get, but we decided we'd try this experiment," said Page, speaking last week a panel discussion at the National Cable Television Association (NCTA) National Show in San Francisco.

Those interested can go to https://upload.video.google.com and load their digital videos to Google Video, itself a relatively new service that, when queried, returns excerpts of close-captioning transcripts of television programs, still images from broadcasts and other programming information.

Posted on Businessblog™

827 - Apr. 14, 2005 - 9.59 AM EST

Mamma.com under SEC investigation

An initial probe by the US Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) of Montreal-based search engine company Mamma.com, has now become a formal SEC investigation, according to a press release sent out earlier this week.

The release stated, “The company believes that as part of its investigation, the SEC may consider matters related to trading in the company’s securities and whether an individual and persons acting jointly or in concert with him may have had a significant influence on the Company in the past as a result of undisclosed shareholdings.”

The investigation stems back to questions regarding control and ownership of a significant number of shares in the firm, and whether an individual or group of investors worked to influence the company based on previously undisclosed shareholdings.

Posted on Businessblog™

826 - Apr. 13, 2005 - 6.04 PM EST

Click fraud starting to scare advertisers

PPC (pay-per-click) is an important factor behind the growth of search engine marketing and online advertising, but now some marketers are asking search engines how many of those clicks are fraudulent or invalid.

The growth of the Internet as a communications, commercial, information and entertainment medium has been phenomenal, but for all the excitement and optimism that has caused, occasionally a shadow falls and the sunshine cyberworld grows dark and ominous.

The newest dark cloud on horizon is click fraud.

Click fraud is not much of a concern to individual surfers, but it could become a big problem for marketers and advertisers. Some marketers are charging that search engines, the big benefactors of pay-for-click advertising, are not doing enough to protect them against the growing practice of click fraud.

Lane's Gifts and Collectibles, a Texarkana, Arkansas, retailer, filed a lawsuit in February against Google, Yahoo, AOL and other search sites alleging that they knowingly overcharged Lane's and other companies.

Posted on Businessblog™

825 - Apr. 13, 2005 - 10.02 AM EST

Some think Google's relevancy is dropping

Forum member Everyman over at Google Watch has been after Google for as long as I can remember.

I don't blame him, I actually think it is good for the industry. He recently posted a thread at Search Engine Watch forums comparing Google to Yahoo, MSN, Ask Jeeves and Gigablast.

He named his thread Google has big problems, and showed how Google’s results were less relevant then all the rest. The example given:

Exact search term: apache 2.0 namevirtualhost.

1) On Yahoo you get the exact documentation from apache.org that you are looking for in positions one and two.

2) On MSN you get the exact documentation from apache.org that you are looking for in postions one, two, and three.

3) On Ask Jeeves you get the exact documentation from apache.org that you are looking for in positions one and two.

4) On Gigablast you get the exact documentation from apache.org that you are looking for in positions one and two.

5) On Google you find, if you haven’t given up by then, the exact documentation from apache.org that you are looking for in positions 70 and 71.

Posted on Businessblog™

824 - Apr. 13, 2005 - 8.22 PM EST

Yahoo expands its presence in Brazil

Yahoo has expanded its market presence in Latin America, with the purchase of Brazilian performance-based advertising network TeRespondo.

TeRespondo operates in much the same manner as Yahoo!'s Overture division -- distributing paid text ads on search results pages -- except its distribution network is centered in Latin America.

The Sao Paulo-based company has offices in Mexico City and Miami. Terms of Yahoo's deal weren't disclosed.

Overture opened an office in Brazil in October 2004 and has built a distribution network that includes Yahoo!, Cadê?, IBest and Bondfaro. It will now include all the sites in TeRespondo's network, including MSN Brazil, UOL, IG and Buscapé.

"We are very happy to be joining forces with a pioneer and global leader like Yahoo!'s Overture," said Juan Calle, CEO of TeRespondo.

"We believe the combination of our strengths and our shared dedication to our customers and to Internet users help us execute on our vision of providing the largest online search advertising network in Brazil."

Posted on Businessblog™

823 - Apr. 12, 2005 - 4.34 PM EST

Yahoo Research Labs expands

Yahoo says it is expanding work done at Yahoo Research Labs, and names Usama Fayyad as the new senior manager of the group.

Yahoo's lab will be developed into a center for innovation with scientists from all over the world, the company said. The lab will tackle scientific problems in search and information navigation, personalization and mobility, Yahoo said.

It also will work on designing algorithms to support new technologies. Fayyad, who earlier worked on data mining technology at NASA, joined Yahoo late last year.

Google has been a pacesetter among search companies, standing out for its cutting-edge technology and ambitious efforts. It also has billed itself as a place where brainy tech professionals will simultaneously find challenging work and change the world.

Posted on Businessblog™

822 - Apr. 12, 2005 - 9.59 AM EST

Google launches mobile search service

Google today added Google Local business lookup to its mobile search offerings. Google Local builds its database from yellow pages and addresses extracted from Google's search engine.

Go to http://mobile.google.com/local/ from within any mobile device browser, and you'll be prompted to enter two bits of information: What and Where. What can be a category (e.g. pizza or accountant) and Where can be a precise address or simply a zip code.

The service then returns several hits and a map showing the location of each business.

The maps are similar to those provided by Google's excellent new mapping service, http://maps.google.com, but unlike the PC browser-based versions, you can't reposition the maps by dragging, which would be a difficult task on most phones anyway.

On several of our searches, Google Local indicated the wrong city and even state, although the street address was fine. For instance, when we asked for pizza in our Manhattan zip code (10016), its first result was a Dominos on 3rd Avenue in New Providence, NJ.

New Providence is about 30 miles away, but there is, in fact, a Dominos on 3rd Avenue less than a mile from our office.

You can get driving directions to any business that Google finds, although if the address is not completely correct, the directions will be wrong. If your device supports it, though, you can click on the phone number in the results to call the business.

Posted on Businessblog™

821 - Apr. 12, 2005 - 9.15 AM EST

China's search market almost doubled in 2004

A recent industry report shows that China's online search engine market witnessed robust growth in 2004.

The report released at a meeting on the development of China's search engine industry held in Xiamen City, eastern Fujian Province, showed that the market of the online service hit 1.25 billion yuan (151 million US dollars) in 2004, rising 81 percent from the previous year.

The report also predicted that the market of online searching engine in China would reach 2.3 billion yuan (278 million US dollars) this year, and might rocket to 5.62 billion yuan (680 million US dollars) by 2007.

Posted on Businessblog™

820 - Apr. 11, 2005 - 11.46 AM EST

Former Ask J. executive joins InfoSearch

InfoSearch Media announced today that Claudio Pinkus has joined the company's board of directors.

Mr. Pinkus brings 25 years of strategic technology management experience to InfoSearch Media, with specific expertise in the search engine market.

Mr. Pinkus served as Chief Operating Officer of Ask Jeeves International, Inc., as well as Chief Strategy Officer of Ask Jeeves, Inc. Prior to joining Ask Jeeves, he served as Chief Executive Officer of Bowne Global Solutions, the world's largest localization services provider.

"Claudio brings an incredible wealth of knowledge to InfoSearch Media from his vast experience with profitable, cutting-edge companies in the industry," said InfoSearch Media CEO Steve Lazuka.

"We're pleased to welcome someone with such an impressive track record to our Board, and look forward to teaming with Claudio to propel InfoSearch Media into its next stage of growth."

During his tenure at Ask Jeeves, Mr. Pinkus was responsible for the creation and deployment of the company's international strategy, enabling the expansion into the UK, Japan, and the U.S. Hispanic market.

Posted on Businessblog™

Copyright © Serge Thibodeau 2005. All rights reserved.

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