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Blog archives for February 2004

137 - February 28, 2004 - 00.05 AM EST

Google's monopoly in the news again

Should Google's monopoly be viewed as a concern to some people? One thing is certain: the power and use of on-line purchase is growing rapidly. Google and other search engines have more power to influence the selection and immediacy of Internet purchases, and in more industries than ever.

Subject to any niceties and distinctions of the purists, there is broad agreement that Google controls almost 80% of web search requests. What threats and risks does that situation pose, if any? Google remains a privately owned company, whose technology is available at no cost to end-users.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

136 - February 26, 2004 - 11.40 AM EST

Yahoo & Sendmail announces support of DomainKeys

The proposed system is intended for verifying the identity of an e-mail sender and reducing e-mail forgeries.

Yahoo, which runs a Web-based e-mail service used by more than 39 million people in the United States, according to Nielsen/NetRatings--plans to develop and test the system by March. Sendmail's open-source technology, which routes the bulk of corporate e-mail to and from the Internet, will be integral to the experiment.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

135 - February 25, 2004 - 9.40 AM EST

30% of people return to same websites while searching

Here's something useful: "More than 30 percent of the time, people conducting searches online are trying to return to a website they've already seen", said Grant Ryan, chief executive of Eurekster Inc.

Ryan thinks search sites should highlight the Web pages a user has visited before, instead of just giving all users the same results for a particular subject. Grant Ryan is convinced Internet searches should be more than "one size fits all."

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

134 - February 24, 2004 - 3.59 PM EST

Google slow at updating PR

I wanted to wait until today to say this: Google is slow at updating PR for most of the sites that I follow. I have clients that have launched new sites at around the critical January 20 to 25 period and all those sites still have a white bar, more than a month later.

Not so long ago, recently-launched sites were usually picked up faster, and a few weeks later they would have a PR of 3 or 4 as a start. Some of the sites I'm talking about already have from 100 to 130 backlinks pointing at them already, and the Google toolbar is still all white. Don't you prefer the color of grass over snow? :-)

If you think Google is changing, well it is. I just don't know what's taking them so long. If it wasn't broken, why try to fix it? I think they made it worse.

Send me your comments or observations on any of this. I'd like to hear them.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

133 - February 24, 2004 - 10.40 AM EST

More than 39% of Americans use search engines

Nielsen//NetRatings reports that 114.5 million or 39 percent of Americans used a search engine during January 2004. The 114.5 million unique users, representing 76 percent of the active online U.S. population, each spent nearly forty minutes using search engines during the month.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

132 - February 23, 2004 - 12.48 PM EST

YourAmigo announces new online marketing product

Search engine innovator YourAmigo today announced a new online marketing product considered the Holy Grail of search engine marketing for any website using e-commerce product databases.

YourAmigo sales and marketing manager Gary Smith said that FEEDAmigo™ is an automated XML feed editing program that slashes the cost and time taken to prepare and update feeds for paid search engine marketing campaigns.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

131 - February 23, 2004 - 00.15 AM EST

Yahoo's ad revenues bulging

"We're not quite married," Sir Howard told reporters, hinting at possible closer ties between the companies in the future. "But at least we're holding hands." In July 2001, three months after Terry S. Semel, the former Warner Bros. studio co-chief, took over as chief executive of Yahoo, he excitedly called a news conference with Sir Howard Stringer, the chairman of the Sony Corp. of America.

The past and present movie moguls described in glowing but vague terms a new partnership between the companies. Sony would buy some advertising on Yahoo, and Yahoo would help Sony develop a new Web site.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

130 - February 20, 2004 - 10.04 AM EST

A new Google office just opened in Sydney, Australia

Overture pioneered the concept of charging advertisers to display links to their websites alongside relevant search results - for example, someone searching for "dog kennels" on Yahoo! would be shown links to advertisers with those wares, alongside normal web page results.

US internet search marketing company Overture has landed in Australia, but it faces a considerable battle from local and international powers.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

128 - February 20, 2004 - 7.53 AM EST

Google's new format changes to AdSense

Google has added multiple new formats to their AdSense Contextual Advertising Network for web publishers.

The new ads offer the ability to show only one targeted text ad at a time, intros a new, wider skyscraper, and small and big versions of their rectangle ad formats.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

127 - February 19, 2004 - 8.27 AM EST

Google faces rising competition from rivals

Google, which released its AdSense product last March, has a big lead in the contextual listings market, signing up marquee sites like NYTimes.com, iVillage and Weather.com in addition to thousands of sites worldwide through a self-service option.

Despite its dominance in the new market for contextual paid listings, search giant Google faces rising competition from rivals claiming better systems for showing advertiser links on Web sites. The Web sites display listings from Google's 150,000 keyword advertisers. Publishers and Google share the revenue generated each time a user clicks on an ad.

Google hopes AdSense can build on the success of its paid search listings. With contextual listings, advertisers' keyword text listings are placed on Web pages with relevant content. For example, a page about a New York Knicks game might display advertiser listings for NBA merchandise or tickets.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

126 - February 18, 2004 - 10.01 AM EST

I like the 'new and improved' Yahoo a lot

Just did some checking and so far, I like the new changes implemented at Yahoo since yesterday morning. Most of the searches I have done came out with very relevant results for the most part.

Among some of the nice changes I have noticed are:

* * For sites with direct RSS feeds, a link to the feed URL is now available with this new implementation. If you need, you can even add the RSS feed to your My Yahoo page with a click of the mouse.

* * New: a cached version of each Web page is now available.

* * AltaVista & AllTheWeb continue to use separate search functionality, using a seperate search index. (Note: AlltheWeb and AltaVista are both owned by Yahoo).

Note that, as it was possible for a while now, a customizable and uncluttered (Read: no ads) entry point to Yahoo's various search databases is available at Search.Yahoo.Com

Here's a tip of the hat to Yahoo!

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

125 - February 18, 2004 - 7.56 AM EST

Language barrier, broken by MSN

MSN has brought its service to five additional regions: Malaysia, Singapore, India, South Africa and Latin America. Microsoft's MSN has unveiled news search in several additional foreign languages, advancing its search strategy internationally to better compete with Google.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

124 - February 17, 2004 - 2.32 PM EST

Google expands the breadth of its index

Google Inc. today announced it expanded the breadth of its web index to more than 6 billion items. This innovation represents a milestone for Internet users, enabling quick and easy access to the world's largest collection of online information.

"People worldwide can find more information with Google than with any other search engine," said Larry Page, Google co-founder and president of Products.

Google's collection of 6 billion items comprises 4.28 billion web pages, 880 million images, 845 million Usenet messages, and a growing collection of book-related information pages.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

123 - February 17, 2004 - 10.06 AM EST

Market for local search to expand

This news from eMarketer and escalate.ca pretty much confirms what I've been predicting for the past six months: The market for local search is ripe for a good increase!

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

122 - February 17, 2004 - 9.09 AM EST

Breaking news

Yahoo Switches To Inktomi, Seeks Feedback: It appaears that Yahoo has finally switched their search results to Inktomi. Sometime in the early hours of Tuesday, search engine results switched from the Google index to a new and improved Inktomi Index.

Thanks to Andy Beal of Search Engine Lowdown for the tip.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

121 - February 17, 2004 - 8.55 AM EST

Google dance update on 'Brandy'

Google is still dancing this morning, as some results in some of Google's data centers are still unstable. I checked them at 7.00 AM (EST) this morning and most were the results we had yesterday. Now when I just rechecked them at 8.20, many were different again.

Folks, remember that this dance started early Thursday morning (Feb. 12). This tells me Google is taking longer to make its update, which is indicative of more pages to index sure, but it also tells me that Google is still fine-tuning and making minor adjustments and tweaks to its search algorithms.

Stay tuned for more as the day progresses.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

120 - February 17, 2004 - 7.51 AM EST

Search ads to bring more viewers to a site

I've said it for years and I will say it again: News bring a lot of people to a site, all the time. If any of you still have doubts on the power of a good news story, this news should help you change your mind.

British Broadcasting Corp. has been a leader in this effort, buying Google ads on a range of news-related searches. Late last month, it bought its first paid listings on searches related to the Hutton Inquiry, which investigated a BBC report that UK Prime Minister Tony Blair embellished intelligence on Iraq to justify the war.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

119 - February 16, 2004 - 10.09 AM EST

A new search engine called Sensis

"Our biggest differentiator (from Google) is we have all this local content. So if (you) go to Google today and search for a restaurant in Kew, you might get two restaurants.

Andrew Day doesn't wear a tie to work and embraces the open plan, casual-dress office, giving the impression of operating like one of the dotcom kings of the past. It's therefore ironic he's about to take on the biggest names in the online world, like Google and Yahoo.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

118 - February 16, 2004 - 8.42 AM EST

Update on "Brandy" (the current Google Dance)

Well some people have already started to call this one update Brandy! Would that be a sign that the worst is over, in terms of major algorithms changes at Google?

At any rate, I did notice some good changes, notably some sites that we are following which lost some of their rankings in the Austin update (January 24) that came back yesterday and are still holding their rankings this morning.

However, as is usually the case, there is always some volatility in the data centers, as Google is recompiling its massive index of about 3.5 Billion page. I expect update "Brandy" to stop dancing in the next few hours, if it hasn't already subsided in some data centers already.

I will keep you posted on Brandy as we see it happen.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

117 - February 13, 2004 - 5.24 PM EST

Vivisimo trying to improve where eBay left off

Vivisimo, developer of Internet clustering search technology that groups search results into instant categories, has taken on the super messy product listings on eBay. eBay’s search engine mines the descriptions and categories that sellers attach to their wares. Vivisimo believes its search algorithm, which analyzes text in product descriptions and generates its own categories, produces more intuitive results.

For example, a query for “digital camera” on eBay yields a wide range of items, plus links to confine the search to the electronics, sports or consumer electronics category or a few subfields. The same search on Vivisimo clusters cameras by brand or functions.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

116 - February 13, 2004 - 9.10 AM EST

Real cute!

Did you look at your Google toolbar today? It's real cool. Happy Valentine to all the nice ladies out there!

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

115 - February 13, 2004 - 9.05 AM EST

Environmental group ads banned by Google

Google, according to a news release, has banned the ads of an environmental group protesting major cruise line Royal Caribbean’s sewage treatment methods, drawing interest to the editorial policies that control the popular Google AdWords program.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

114 - February 12, 2004 - 2.10 PM EST

Internet advertising more effective than TV

During a session that quickly became a seminar of negative comparisons to TV advertising, some of the country's largest marketers detailed how "on the cheap" Internet methods have become a central muscle of their marketing communications programs.

A growing number of large marketers are finding Internet direct-marketing and relationship-building strategies more effective than TV advertising, attendees at the iMedia Brand Summit heard.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

113 - February 12, 2004 - 10.42 AM EST

A new Google dance has just started

Well, many were expecting it only next week, but it just started! Many backward links have been seen as fluctuating in at least two of the data centers that we follow. By now, some of you probably noted that there were also instability that started as early as Tuesday.

Will this one be called Update Arizona or Philadelphia? It will be interesting to see how they will name that one...

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

112 - February 12, 2004 - 8.55 AM EST

Bloggers disappointed at Google

Google's Blogger service is bypassing Really Simple Syndication (RSS) in favour of an alternative technology, in a move that has sparked more discord in a bitter dispute over Web log syndication formats.

The search giant, which acquired Blogger.com last year, began allowing the service's million-plus members to syndicate their online diaries to other Web sites last month. To implement the feature, it chose the new Atom format instead of the widely used, older RSS.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

111 - February 11, 2004 - 4.29 PM EST

Lycos phasing out its generic portal

Lycos said over time it will phase out its generic media portal business and focus instead on subscription offerings such as online dating services and Web site publishing.

Spanish-American online media firm Terra Lycos said on Wednesday its Lycos Web portal business will shift to a subscription-based service from a generalist online outlet in order to boost revenues.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

110 - February 11, 2004 - 10.01 AM EST

Did anybody see this??

Just found this in my logs: When you type www.gogole.com it still goes to the 'real' Google, except it has no PR! Google with a PR of 0? I think this is real strange. Please give me your comments or tell me if you find anything on this as I am making a few investigations of my own on this... (!)

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

109 - February 11, 2004 - 9.01 AM EST

Google takes ad service to China

Seeking to tap a thriving Internet business in China, Google will offer its advertising-bidding system in the country's native language. On Wednesday, the search company will open its advertising service, called AdWords, in two dialects of Chinese: simplified and traditional. AdWords lets advertisers bid for ad placement on pages linked to keyword queries; the ads automatically appear within Google results. While the company has drawn some Chinese advertisers, it believes that this will open doors to new customers.

"We want to make sure advertisers are able to reach out to customers in the Chinese writing system that's more comfortable," said Adam Freed, Google's director of international online sales and operations.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

108 - February 10, 2004 - 8.54 PM EST

Yahoo testing its results with Inktomi?

According to Jennifer Laycock over at About.com, Yahoo users around the globe are reporting occasional appearances of Inktomi listings in the Yahoo search results. A brief testing yesterday and this morning provided some mixed results.

Some phrases showed what appeared to be pure Inktomi listings, while others were clearly still matching up with Google. Still others matched neither set of listings, making many observers speculate that Yahoo is testing out it's own algorithm on the Inktomi listings. Yahoo has stated that they will be making the switch to Inktomi sometime this quarter, but no actual date has been announced.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

107 - February 10, 2004 - 10.06 AM EST

Prying for information

For a variety of reasons — improperly configured servers, holes in security systems, human error — a wide assortment of material not intended for public viewing is, in fact, publicly available. Once Google or another search engine finds it, drawing it back into secrecy becomes nearly impossible.

That is giving rise to more activity by "Googledorks," who troll the Internet for confidential information, security engineers said.

If you own a website, and if there is some information on it you would like to keep private, get yourself a Robots.txt file and protect your valuable data from prying eyes.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

106 - February 10, 2004 - 9.15 AM EST

FindWhat confirms its acquisition of Espotting

Well it took a long time, but now its finally official: FindWhat confirms its acquisition of Espotting.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

105 - February 9, 2004 - 9.42 AM EST

Microsoft slow to go head-to-head with Google

Microsoft's announced intention to dominate search — its third such quest in recent years — is being depicted as a crusade against Google, the default Web search leader.

Microsoft's latest assault on the Web search business is just getting under way, but already a familiar elephant may be ambling toward the doorway. Although Microsoft has stopped short of threatening to cut off Google's air supply, Google's prominence has led Silicon Valley partisans to cast this as an updated version of the mid-1990s Netscape-Microsoft "browser wars."

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

104 - February 7, 2004 - 9.10 AM EST

PPC advertising clickthroughs seen as weakening

Online advertising drew lower direct response rates in the fourth quarter because of the higher volume of ads and more advertisers using them for branding, DoubleClick said yesterday.

The New York online ad technology company reported serving 203.8 billion online ads in the holiday quarter, up 43 percent from last year's fourth quarter.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

103 - February 6, 2004 - 9.20 AM EST

Search is now the second most used feature on the Web

Recent statistics indicate that within the USA Google has 32% of the share of web searches followed by 26% conducted via Yahoo, 18% by AOL and 17% by MSN, the other major players in the market.

At the same time while 76% of its own search enquiries are powered by Google technology, Google technology additionally powers search engine technology for MSN, Ask Jeeves and some other small players, giving it over 50% of the search engine market.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

102 - February 5, 2004 - 10.39 AM EST

Search engine technology being developed by IBM

IBM would like to see its WebFountain supercomputing project become the next big thing in Web search. Along with competitors such as ClearForest, Fast Search and Transfer, and Mindfabric, Big Blue hopes to foster demand for new data-mining services that ferret out meaning and context, not just lists of more-or-less relevant links.

It's a tall order, one that's pushing the limits of supercomputing design and stretching expectations as to what raw processing power can accomplish when set to work on the world's largest document library. Traditional search engines such as Google are already hard-pressed to match search terms to specific Web pages. Now WebFountain and other projects will take on a task that's exponentially more complex.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

101 - February 5, 2004 - 8.46 AM EST

New search records being broken by Janet Jackson

Well I guess we pretty much expected this news: "Although it is very difficult to compare searches for the two events, it looks like the Super Bowl halftime show was the equal of September 11 when it comes to Internet attention," Schatz said. "That is, to put it bluntly, mind-blowing."

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

100 - February 4, 2004 - 1.53 PM EST

MSN rolls out it's beta version

Just don't expect anything radical just yet as it still appears to be based on the existing Inktomi results of its current MSN search. The MSN search beta is not in a state to challenge Google at the moment. It seems quite slow and the majority of results are still coming from Inktomi. Although rumoured to exist, in some simple searches we applied we could see no sign of any results from MSNBot.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

099 - February 4, 2004 - 9.37 AM EST

From Mailbox to Trashcan

Dave Jung over at B2Blog picked up a good article by Dean Rieck on how to write a better message that will be read, instead of being trashed. It's good reading.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

098 - February 4, 2004 - 00.02 AM EST

Yahoo to offer downloable music?

In another sign of changing times in the search industry, does this news signify a change of heart on Yahoo's part or simply a diversification of their search operations. Your comments are always well appreciated.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

097 - February 3, 2004 - 8.32 AM EST

Searching is getting tougher?

If you feel searching on the Web is getting tougher, your'e not alone.

OneStat.com, a Web analytics firm in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, found that two- and three-word searches are the norm for Web searchers. Nearly 33 percent of a sample of 2 million Web searchers monitored in the past two months used two-word queries and 26 percent used three-word queries. Nineteen percent searched using a single word, and searches using four to seven words made up 21 percent.

Keep that in mind when your optimizing your site...

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

096 - February 2, 2004 - 3.25 PM EST

The pros and cons of Content Management Software

If you are using (or contemplating using) CMS (Content Management Software) to help you either create or update any content to your website, you should seriously take the time to read this article about CMS.

"In the last two years, some companies have been developing their web sites and creating new or additional content with some of those so-called CMS packages. Some of the CMS programs available today may in fact negatively affect the visibility of your web site in the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages)".

"The main reason for that is some of them were not designed with search engines in mind. They were designed for what they are supposed to do: to help manage the contents of certain documents! That said, how can a company that has made extensive use of such CMS software reasonably insure itself that their site will do well in the search engines?"

Find out more by reading here.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

095 - February 2, 2004 - 12.41 PM EST

Ask Jeeves gets hit with same lawsuit as Google

Andy Beal at Search Engine Lowdown reports that now it is Ask Jeeves that gets hit with a similar lawsuit as Google did.

"The suburban Detroit-based company, a retailer of custom window treatments, also named Time Warner Inc.'s America Online, Netscape, CompuServe, Ask Jeeves Inc. and EarthLink Inc. in the suit, accusing those companies of the same infringement because they are given Web search support by Google."

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

094 - February 2, 2004 - 10.38 AM EST

Paid inclusion search market growing

With experts projecting that the global market for paid Internet searches will reach more than US $6 billion (S$10 billion) by 2006, up from about US$2 billion last year, search engine companies are gearing up to duke it out for a chunk of the advertising pie. Mr Sterling, program director at strategic research firm The Kelsey Group, senses a war brewing on the Internet.

One of the best paid inclusion search engines today is Global Business Listing.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

093 - February 2, 2004 - 8.49 AM EST

Google involved in a trademark dispute

A distributor of window blinds and wallpaper has filed a lawsuit against Google, claiming the search engine's keyword-based advertising violates its trademarks. American Blind & Wallpaper Factory argued that Google, by selling keyword-based advertising to competing retailers when Google users search on "American Blind" or "American Blinds", is violating the company's trademark.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

092 - February 2, 2004 - 7.45 AM EST

A new search engine tool

The tool, also called Eurekster, refines searches and calls up results based on what friends and contacts in customers' online "social networks" have previously shown interest in. Users sign up for a log-on and password and encourage friends and colleagues to also use Eurekster.

Permanent link to this news story   |   Posted on Businessblog™

Copyright © Serge Thibodeau 2004. All rights reserved.

All views and opinions expressed on this blog are those of Serge Thibodeau only and are not representative of any company listed. All slogans, trademarks, text or logo representation used or referred to on this blog are the property of their respective owners.