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My 2 featured articles for the week ending Sep. 30, 2005:

Archived blogs for the week of September 19, 2005

1002 - September 30, 2005 - 11.05 AM EST

Google mulling over classified ads

According to PaidContent.org, which cited an alert from newsletter Classified Intelligence Report, Google has asked Adicio and CareerBuilder to offer it direct RSS feeds of its listings.

The report says that as of now, Adicio and CareerBuilder.com have not agreed to cooperate. "Analysts, including us, predict that Internet advertisers will move to free sites if they become convinced that they will reach an audience as large (or larger) on a search engine than on a paid advertising site," CIR wrote.

The report comes on the heels of an article last week in the London Sunday Times that Google and Yahoo had approached Amsterdam's Trader Classified Media about a buyout.

Classified ad sites have to weigh the benefits of gaining a larger audience against the potential negative impact of losing control, wrote Nathan Weinberg in a blog on the InsideGoogle Web site.

"If Google has a feed of all the major listing sites, and grabs more traffic than they do, then it can start its own listing service and cut off the rest of them at the knees," he writes.

"Google can't compete with established, massive classified sites, unless those sites are shooting themselves in the foot every day with a crappy user experience."

Weinberg goes on to predict that Google will release a travel search engine that will put the established airline ticket and hotel search sites out of business within a year. "Those sites are all terribly designed, and a Google-style site would be like a flesh-eating virus to those sites."

A Google spokesman did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Posted on Businessblog™

1001 - September 28, 2005 - 3.49 PM EST

Search index at Google climbing

Google reports an updated index and said it is more than three times larger than any other search engine.

"We're celebrating our seventh birthday... We had a pretty strong year," Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said in a phone interview with CNET News.com.

Schmidt listed the launch of new products including Google Talk, Google Earth, Google Video and Google Desktop Search.

"And we've sort of been struggling here with respect to the index. It has always been much larger than the others."

"We're announcing tonight that in terms of unduplicated pages our index is now three times larger than any other search engine," he said, without saying how many pages are in the index.

Google will stop counting the number of pages indexed, which previously was listed as 8 billion, "because people don't necessarily agree on how to count it," Schmidt said.

Posted on Businessblog™

1000 - September 28, 2005 - 2.49 PM EST

MSN's search relevance lower

Wow! Our number 1,000 post already! Let's keep it up!

In the news, MSN's search relevance fell to the 5th position from 3rd among two thousand users surveyed in the 2nd quarter, according to a Keynote survey conducted by the Wall Street Journal.

The reports states that, overall, it is MSN's lack of search relevance that caused the drop, as 27 percent of users found their general search results lacked the relevance they were hoping for.

Of the survey, 37 percent working with specific geographical locations (or local search) didn't find the relevance they wanted, cites the Keynote survey.

Microsoft says they asked Keynote not to disclose the study, which would have mentioned MSN Search's drop in a press release. A MSN information services group director, Lisa Gurry, claims Microsoft had problems with Keynote's methodology.

The results they found didn't match Microsoft's research. MSN claims that a better assessment of its search performance can be found in its search queries share in the US. WSJ notes comScore's numbers have MSN's percentage at 15.5 percent for July. In comparison, Google had 36.5 percent for the month, and Yahoo had 30.5 percent.

Posted on Businessblog™

999 - September 27, 2005 - 11.31 AM EST

InfoSpace now offers mobile search

The mobile-search sector gets even more crowded, as InfoSpace further expands its offerings for the wireless industry.

This week, InfoSpace is expected to unveil a service that delivers business listings and maps, movie showtimes and other information based on both location and time.

The company hopes to lay the foundation for an application that automatically offers information in concentric circles, allowing users to access the most relevant information with just a click or two.

Movies are presented based on the next available showings, for instance, and restaurants could be displayed automatically in order of proximity to a user based on global satellite positioning.

"We feel strongly that the old world of the application silos-going to a movie guide to get a movie, then a city guide to get a restaurant-was OK a couple of years ago," said Joe Herzog, InfoSpace's director of emerging products. "But in the future, all that will be collapsed into one."

Posted on Businessblog™

998 - September 26, 2005 - 4.41 PM EST

MSN launches paid-search service in France

MSN announces its new paid-search service in France has been lauched today. MSN says its new service will allow advertisers to target their specific audience markets based on parameters such as time, location, age and gender through direct and display ads.

First reported in March of this year, MSN's adCenter has been running since August 31 in Singapore, according to Microsoft. Trials in the U.S. will begin in October.

AdCenter can generate a profile of customers who are most likely to look for certain keywords while also suggesting ones based on the content of the advertiser's Web site, Microsoft said. Through the "campaign optimization" feature, advertisers can also change their budgets and keywords in addition to applying geographic and demographic filters.

A cost feature estimates the rank and traffic per month per keyword, according to Microsoft. Advertisers who use the system will also receive reports on its ads, including click-through rates, the company said.

Posted on Businessblog™

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