60 Day Sandbox for Google and AskJeeves. MSN Quickest, Yahoo Next

"The bottom line is that we've discovered all engines seem to delay indexing of new domain names for at least thirty days. Google so far has delayed indexing THIS new domain for 60 days since first crawling it.

AskJeeves has crawled thousands of pages, while indexing none of them. MSN indexes faster than all engines but requires robots.txt file. Yahoo's Slurp crawls on again off again for 60 days, but indexes only six of total 15,000 or more pages crawled to date."

Google's Eye in the Sky

Every time I fly in or out of National or Dulles airports, I play a little game: I plaster my face to the plane window and see how far away from home I can track my progress -- not intermittently, but continuously -- by spotting familiar landmarks on the ground. This is easy on a flight up to New York or Boston, but quickly gets difficult to the south and west of D.C.

With a hobby like that, I was predisposed to like Google Earth, the font-of-all-knowledge search portal's latest freebie release. But even looking at the fanciest map around can get old. What made the difference here was all the other data Google has packed into this program, from 3D building models (including my house, for some odd reason) to overlays of road and rail networks. And how Google has allowed other users to contribute to that data.

Now playing on Google ...

"Google's new video search tool is turning out to be a little more expansive than the company planned, with users uploading copyrighted content ranging from the last 'Matrix' movie to the 'Family Guy' cartoons."

Google is not allowed to use the Gmail name in Germany

Googles E-Mail-Dienst Google Mail vergibt hierzulande keine Adressen der Domain gmail.com mehr. Neue Adressen legt der Dienst nur noch für die Domain googlemail.com an. Hintergrund ist ein Rechtsstreit um die Marke Gmail. Der Hamburger Unternehmer Daniel Giersch, Inhaber der Marke "G-Mail ... und die Post geht richtig ab", hat Google das Verwenden der Bezeichung "Gmail" in Deutschland per einstweiliger Verfügung untersagen lassen. Google sei es insbesondere auch verboten worden, deutschen Nutzern E-Mail-Adressen unter dem Domainkürzel gmail.com zur Verfügung zu stellen. Aus diesem Grund war der Dienst auf den Server von der Adresse www.gmail.com auf mail.google.com umgezogen.

Google habe zwar nach wie vor nicht die einstweilige Verfügung erhalten, rechne aber in kurzer Zeit damit, erklärte Unternehmenssprecher Stefan Keuchel gegenüber heise online. Google geht davon aus, mit den getroffenen Maßnahmen den Anforderungen der einstweiligen Verfügung genüge zu leisten. Insbesondere sollen bereits bestehende Gmail-Adressen erhalten bleiben und nicht auf das neue Suffix @googlemail.com umgestellt werden

Google Sued for ‘Click Fraud’

Google profits from the manipulation of its pay-per-click advertising service by others, and hasn’t done enough to end the practice, according to a lawsuit filed by pay-per-click analysis firm Click Defense.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court as a potential class action, alleges Google has been negligent in monitoring fraudulent clicks, at a loss to its advertisers and a gain to its own bottom line.

In addition to more than $10 million, the suit asks that Google be required to disclose “the true extent of click fraud” and to return any money to advertisers that resulted from the practice.

“We believe this suit is without merit, and we will defend ourselves against it vigorously,” said Google spokesman Mike Mayzel. The case is similar to a suit pending in Arkansas state court, and Mr. Mayzel said the same comment would apply in that case.

While Google’s AdWords program does have a process for click fraud refunds, “the protocol is changing by the week,” according to Scott Boyenger, CEO of Click Defense. “When you’re bringing in a billion dollars a quarter, you’re going to protect that nut.”

Advertising is far and away Google’s main source of revenue. The company reported revenue of $1.256 billion in the first quarter, including $462 million in traffic acquisition costs that it shares with its partners.

With Google’s service, and others like it, advertisers guarantee a certain payment for each time a user clicks on an ad. Higher payments win more prominent placement in response to a keyword search. The average cost per click is $0.50, though individual payments for some keywords top $100, according to the lawsuit.

Cottage industries of strategy and abuse have emerged around pay-per-click ads. Rival businesses that want to decimate their competitors’ ad budgets, as well as ad-hosting sites that get a cut of Google’s revenue, use software and cheap labor to ratchet up advertisers’ payments. Around 20 percent of clicks are fraudulent, according to Click Defense.

Fort Collins, Colorado-based Click Defense analyzes the sources of clicks on its customers’ ads to find patterns that might indicate fraud. It cobbles together its tracking data without the help of Google’s closely held records.

But Google knows, or should know, about instances of click fraud, charges the suit, which was filed by the Los Angeles law firm Kabateck Brown Kellner. It accused the Mountain View, California, search giant of breach of contract, negligence, unfair enrichment, and unfair business practices on behalf of all AdWords’ customers in the last five years.

Mr. Boyenger said his goal in filing the suit was to make Google open its AdWords records to third-party auditing and establish a formal process for click fraud complaints. As an AdWords advertiser, Click Defense counts itself among the plaintiffs deserving damages.
Arkansas Suit
In February, a similar class action suit was filed in Arkansas against Yahoo, Time Warner (AOL), Ask Jeeves, Disney, Lycos, LookSmart, and FindWhat, in addition to Google. The class would include all customers of all eight search engines’ advertising services.

After some confusion about whether the appropriate venue was in state or district court, the case is expected to continue in Arkansas state court.

Upon hearing of the Click Defense lawsuit, the Arkansas plaintiffs’ lawyer, Joel Fineberg, was skeptical, saying it seemed redundant. “Our case is substantially broader in that there are more parties involved,” he said. “We will be able to address many more individuals and companies.”
Kabateck Brown Kellner declined to comment on the merits of their case versus the one in Arkansas. The suit’s jurisdiction would extend throughout the United States due to the large sum sought and the residence of the plaintiffs in other states.

Google Indexing Subscription Content

BetaNews has learned that Google is testing a premium service that will open up mainstream access to the "Deep Web," allowing webmasters with restricted or subscription content to let in Google and provide the masses with free previews.
The service is being tested server-side with a small number of sites that are under strict confidentiality agreements.

Premium content will be indexed and tagged as paid, and will be displayed in a special content area on the right side of Google's search results underneath the AdSense advertising links.

Some paid articles are "first click free" and will appear within Google's "natural" aggregated search results - if the participating publication decides that the content should be accessible when Google is the referrer.

Yahoo announced its own Yahoo! Search Subscription this month in an effort to surface normally restricted content. "This enables consumer to access their personal subscription content in one place via Yahoo! Search," a Yahoo spokesperson told BetaNews.
In contrast to Yahoo, Google has kept its efforts shrouded in secrecy. "We are under a strict confidentiality agreement. We've been told several times by Google that we are not allowed to share this information with anyone outside the involved organizations," a source close to testing told BetaNews.
Sources said that Google's Premium service creates a full sitemap of the paid site and then clears the Google IP block and Spider agent to show protected content. Publishers will be made aware that there was a Google referral.
"It doesn't surprise me that they are testing this kind of thing," Search Engine Watch editor Danny Sullivan told BetaNews. "Google has already had limited agreements with content providers to get into protected areas in one way or another. This is a natural extension of that, but was probably spurred along by Yahoo."
A Google spokesperson said the company doesn't typically comment on industry "speculation."

Yahoo Introduces 'Social' Search Engine

My Web 2.0 allows you to share a personal Web index. Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service

"Yahoo has enhanced its My Web personal search service to enable users to share their personal Web index of pages and links.

My Web 2.0, which is in test (or beta) mode, was launched late on Tuesday and will be available here on a first-come first-serve basis to a limited number of users.
Yahoo launched the first version of My Web in April to let users save and annotate Web pages and keep a history of their search queries as well as the search results they click on.
At the time, Yahoo said My Web was intended for users who were interested in creating a personal Web index tailored to their tastes and interests. My Web also let users share saved results via e-mail, syndication, and a public Web page of saved search results--a so-called link blog.

Search Others' Web Indices

But My Web 2.0 allows groups of users to make their personal Web indexes available to each other. Thus, a Web 2.0 user can search not only his or her own personal Web index, but also the indexes of friends, coworkers, and peers who have made their indexes available for sharing with each other. For example, a group of physicists might create a group to share their personal Web indexes, knowing that subsequent queries would yield only hand-picked results from their peers.

"My Web 2.0 was designed from the ground up as a social search engine. It can search across trusted networks of people and communities, and complements [general] Web searching," said Eckart Walther, vice president of product management for Yahoo Search.
The overall aim of personal search services such as My Web 2.0 is to deliver page results that are more relevant than the ones users obtain by running queries against search engines' entire indexes, which typically contain billions of pages. Google and Ask Jeeves both have personal search services.

My Web 2.0 users need not make their entire Web index available for sharing with the people in their group. The service lets users keep links and pages private. Later on, Yahoo will permit My Web 2.0 users to make their index available not only to those in their groups but to all My Web 2.0 users.

How It Works

Users manage their My Web 2.0 groups through a contact management feature in the Yahoo 360 blogging and social networking service from the Sunnyvale, California, company. To use this feature, Web 2.0 users don't have to populate their Yahoo 360 space with any content if they would rather not, Walther said.

Queries launched into the personal indexes of a group of My Web 2.0 users deliver results based on Yahoo's new MyRank search technology, which was designed for personal Web searching. Like its predecessor, My Web 2.0 is a free service but it requires users to register with Yahoo and create an account.

Another new feature in My Web 2.0 is a tagging capability that lets users add descriptive keywords to saved pages and links. With this feature, users won't have to organize saved pages and links in folders and subfolders, according to Yahoo.

Personalizing the search experience is part of Yahoo's overall strategic push to make its entire portal more relevant and useful to its visitors, according to Patrick Mahoney, a Yankee Group analyst. "As options increase for consumers, a key way for portals such as Yahoo to increase usage is to create the most personalized experience possible," Mahoney said.

Google hovers as Baidu readies IPO

"As Baidu.com Inc. nears an initial public offering in the U.S., the company appears to be drawing a close look from Google Inc., which sources said could have an interest in acquiring the Chinese Internet search leader."

What is the Open Directory Project?

The Open Directory Project (ODP or DMOZ.org) has recently received a lot of negative press. Is the ODP still as important as it was?

The Open Directory Project is an Internet directory that started in 1998 as an alternative to Yahoo's human edited directory. When Google began using the ODP as the source for the Google Directory, it was almost guaranteed that a web site received better Google rankings when it was listed in the ODP. What is the problem with the Open Directory Project?

In contrast to search engines that use software programs to index web pages, volunteer editors read and classify the web sites that are submitted to the Open Directory Project. Many categories in the ODP don't have a volunteer editor anymore and the editors of the other categories cannot handle all of the submissions they receive. Some categories have a backlog of several months.

Rumor has it that some ODP editors accept money to speed up submissions and that some people became ODP editors just to promote their own web sites.
Is it still worth to submit your web site to the Open Directory Project?
It is still worth to submit your web site to the Open Directory Project but you shouldn't be disappointed if your web site doesn't get through. Many web sites mirror ODP content so a link from the ODP means that many other web sites will also link to your site.

However, there are many other Internet directories that can also have a positive effect on your web site. Don't focus on the ODP alone but submit your web site to many different directories and search engines so that your web site is not dependent on a single source.

"Copyright Axandra.com - Web site promotion software tools."

Answers.com partners with IceRocket.com

GuruNet Corporation (AMEX: GRU - News), creators of the Answers.com answer-based search engine, and IceRocket.com, a privately held search engine are pleased to announce an agreement and the launch of a partnership whereby IceRocket will refer its visitors to Answers.com for reference content, and Answers.com will send its "blog search" traffic to IceRocket. GuruNet will receive a share of any revenues generated by its referral traffic.

"IceRocket takes a novel approach to search, providing options for a host of different types of searches," explained Jeff Cutler, Chief Revenue Officer of GuruNet. "Blogging in particular is only gaining momentum as a mainstream medium, and we're pleased to be partnering with a company that has successfully built tools to efficiently locate relevant content in the blogosphere. We look forward to serving both of our user bases, sharing the best of each property when appropriate."

Blake Rhodes, CEO of IceRocket, added: "We wanted to add a premier content element to our service, and Answers.com clearly leads the industry in reference content. It's a win-win situation and we look forward to exchanging specific types of traffic with them; each party will do what it does best and the user benefits."

Yahoo tests behavior-based content ads

Yahoo has begun testing a program to show text listings on Web pages based on user behavior.In a pilot program with Revenue Science, a Bellevue, Wash., behavioral-targeting company, Yahoo's cost-per-click text ads are shown on Web pages using data collected by Revenue Science.

The program, which can be seen on www.dogster.com and www.catster.com, could represent a rival to Google's far-flung AdSense network, which displays ads on thousands of sites based on the content on the Web page. Revenue Science, in contrast, targets ads to consumer behavior.Omar Tawakol, Revenue Science's svp of marketing, said prior site behavior often yields better results than page content. "There's a big portion of the Web that's a contextual desert," he said. "There's a ton of sites on the Web like entertainment, blogging and social networking sites—all those sites are better served by focusing on the user, not what's on the page."

Tawakol declined to provide more information on the test or how Revenue Science collected the visitor data used to target the ads. He said early results of the program, which began in the spring, were "very encouraging."A Yahoo representative confirmed the test but declined further comment.The test comes weeks before Yahoo is expected to release its own AdSense-like contextual advertising network. Yahoo currently operates a small network, showing text ads on a handful of non-Yahoo sites like ESPN.com and Edmunds.com, in addition to the Yahoo portal. The Yahoo content network works similarly to AdSense, scanning a Web page for its context and then matching that to advertising.Several Web publishers, including WSJ.com and Reuters.com, use Revenue Science's software to display ads based on a visitor's prior site behavior. In April, the company launched a network that would allow advertisers to run behavioral-targeted brand advertising campaigns across several sites. It did not reveal which sites are participating in the network.Tawakol said the test is a complement to that effort, designed to bring the success Revenue Science has seen in behavioral targeting for brand advertisers to direct response marketers.

“We know we're on to something very interesting,” he said.Revenue Science rival Tacoda Systems last May released a behavioral-targeted text listings program. That effort, however, has been put on hold, according to Tacoda CEO Dave Morgan, who said the company is focused on building its graphical ad network."The greatest priority to us is delivering graphical banner ads for branding," he said, "because there's a lot more money available, we believe, over the next two years in that area."

MSN introduces "RankNet" algorithm

"We launched our MSN Search engine on February 1st and have remained hard at work to make it better every day. Yesterday, we released some improvements we hope you’ll like. Much of this work is targeted directly at feedback that our blog readers and other customers have given us, so please keep the comments coming! We have a long way to go to achieve our vision of the perfect search engine – and we can’t do it without your continued feedback and support.

Our number one user request was to improve and expand upon our local search offering. The ‘Near me’ feature we launched in February was missing something really important – the ability to look up yellow page and white page numbers. Our new local search beta integrates maps, yellow pages, white pages, and web results. It also integrates satellite images from TerraServer to provide you with an overhead shot of where you want to go. This makes it much easier to find a local pizza place or art museum! You can access this beta by heading to our local search page or by entering a query term with local data (such as a zipcode or city, state) in our mainline search box.

Our team focuses obsessively on the relevance of the web results. We want to get the most relevant result in the top position all of the time. The ranker we released in February served us well, but had some flaws that we weren’t happy about. In collaboration with Chris Burges and other friends from Microsoft Research, we now have a brand new ranker. The new ranker has improved our relevance and perhaps most importantly gives us a platform we think we can move forward on quicker than before. This new ranker also is based on technology with an awesome name – it’s a neural net, which we internally call "RankNet".

For you Star Trek fans out there – I keep thinking of the android Data powering our search engine. Pictured below is an illustration of the relevance for the query “pbs evolution videos” over time. With the oldest on top, you can see that over the past few weeks we’ve brought high quality results into the top positions and moved the official PBS page to position 1. The “correct” page is highlighted in green below and you can see it move into position #1."

Google Launches In-Browser Video Player

Google introduced two new elements to its Video Search beta: a plug-in application that lets users watch videos in the browser and access to user-uploaded videos, which the company has been collecting since April.
For the average Web user, the Google Video Viewer is designed to make video accessible in a way never seen before, said Peter Chane, senior business product manager for Google Video.

Google wanted to make the viewing of videos "a very simple, consistent experience," Chane said, adding that the company wanted "to allow people to watch video today and, over time, to watch more video integrated into the platform [with] very interesting, diverse results from users—from TV, from organizations large and small, and from individuals."
The browser plug-in can be downloaded for free from http://video.google.com, and is specifically designed to play content exclusive to Google video. After installing the viewer, users can enter keywords into the search box and the results will show up with still-screen captures and small bits of text next to each.
Those with video available will have a small, triangular "play" icon next to the text. Once a user clicks on the video they want to see, five still-screen captures will be displayed in the browser–the top will be the full video and the rest will capture small parts of video that are most relevant to the specific search.

Click the play button, and the still image will spring to life within the browser. The plug-in currently works with the Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox Web browsers.
Google has yet to report how many user-uploaded videos it has gathered in the past few months, but some of them that the company recommends to users came from UNICEF and Link TV, which include David Beckham helping the organization in Copenhagen, Denmark, and a 25-minute news clip showing Iraqis pulling down a statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.
Chane said the user-uploaded videos go through a light screening test to make sure they don't violate submission rules, which bans any kind of pornography or other adult-oriented materials. And he said they've been keeping watch for copyrighted materials as well.

"Surprisingly enough, we haven't seen a lot of that," he said. "We've had a real resonation with organizations who want to upload video and want to get their voice out."
Google based its plug-in on the cross-platform VLC media player, and the company plans to make its code available to the open-source community as part of its Google code project.
"We're generally supportive of open-source efforts and thought the VLC work was especially high-quality and had good engineering," Chane said.
Gartner analyst Allen Weiner said the Video Viewer combined with Video Search expands far beyond being a nifty way to upload and view videos online. Instead, he said, it shows that Google will be a company that can provide an "end-to-end system for an ecobusiness."
"If you upload a video, there is a metadata file that asks whether or not you want to charge for your video," Weiner said. "Then consider the new Google for-pay services announced last week. It's apparent the company is headed to deliver video services that can then be delivered into business models."

Weiner also mentioned that he thinks Google eventually will create a more customized video player, like that used on CNN.com, which will make way for ad-based video content.
"If these videos are indexed well–and they are–you can play very poignant ads in the right content," he said.

Search behavior reveals consumer fears of a real estate bubble

"Searches on the terms 'real estate bubble' and 'housing bubble' climbed to a 12-month high for the week ending May 28, according to online monitoring service Hitwise, New York."

Google vs. Yahoo: Clash of cultures

"Yahoo and Google are taking different paths in the quest to be king of the hill in the search sector. The tug-of-war between the two companies is really a test of what kind of corporate culture an Internet company needs."

Google Library: Peril For Publishers?

June 17, 2005Google Library: Peril For Publishers? By Susan Kuchinskas
Google is digitizing entire university libraries. Book publishers haven't decided if the Google Library Project means exposure to new readers or copyright infringement on a massive scale. It's a question the Supreme Court may have to decide.

In October, the search goliath announced Google Print, a program that lets publishers work with Google to digitize books to which they hold the rights in order to make them available for search. Google promises publishers they can earn money when searchers click on contextual ads that appear alongside the book pages.
But book publishers were taken aback when they heard about Google Library, a project that had been under way since 2002 with the University of Michigan. Harvard University, Stanford University, Oxford University and the New York Public Library also are in the process of letting Google scan parts or all of their collections.

Google broke the news in December, the same day print.google.com officially went live. The Library Project was positioned as an extension of Google Print, but some publishers saw it as more of a collision with it.
Deals with Google were struck one publisher at a time, but they included restrictions on the amount of material from a work under copyright that Google could show in search results, maintaining a fair-use argument for the search engine's use. When searchers click on a listing, they might be able to read anywhere from several pages to only a few sentences containing the keywords. Listings also include a shot of the book cover, links to online booksellers and ads.
But if Google copies a library book instead of making a deal with the publisher of that book, it's likely the publisher would be cut out of any ad revenue share. Google could not make executives available for interviews, but John Wilkin, associate librarian for the University of Michigan and head of its Google Library Project, said his library had no agreement to share ad revenue with Google.

In other words, all the ad money would stay in Google's pocket. "Having reached these agreements with publishers for the use of books under their copyright, Google now announced they'd scan works from several libraries -- including works that are currently under copyright -- without requesting the permission of the copyright owners," said Allan Adler, vice president for legal affairs for the Association of American Publishers (AAP). "Imagine the consternation that caused among publishing houses who realized the possibility that books they had agreed to provide to Google under contract might nevertheless be scanned by Google without those agreements."

Adler said AAP members were wondering why Google had sat down with them, then announced two months later that it didn't really need publishers' permission to scan. "Google has said publishers can opt out works from the Library Project," Adler said, "but we understand that to mean not that Google wouldn't scan them in their entirety and include them in its database, but only that they wouldn't use part of the works in response to a search query." The librarians saw the project as a way to make their collections more accessible to a digital-centric public. They also were lured by Google's offer to give them their own digital copy of each book. Universities around the world have begun their own digitization projects, but Google's muscle and money could put those projects on Internet time.
University of Michigan's Wilkin said, "We had focused on the hard 10 percent of the problem. Google swooped in and did the easy 90 percent." While Google will only make snippets of the libraries' copyrighted works available through search, the University of Michigan plans to make entire digital copies of works not under copyright available to library users.

Google and the libraries insist they're respecting copyright and acting inside the law. Said Wilkin, "For everything for which there are no rights issues, such as pre-1923 works and U.S. government publications, we'll allow multiple online users to access our copies at once. But for works under copyright, we're not going to be able to provide full digital access for even our own users."
The AAP's Adler said the publishing community wasn't focusing on the murky fair use question, but rather on Google's plan to make money from books it hadn't bought.

"Google's use of these copyrighted works in order to expand the kinds of responses it offers to users of its search engine is clearly going to be used to enhance its ability to sell advertising in conjunction with the operation of that search engine," Adler said. The American Association of University Presses (AAUP) sent a critical letter to Google, complaining that Google Library could cut into the presses' earnings. According to the AAUP, on average, university presses recover 87 percent of the cost of publishing scholarly books from sales, with payments for permission to reproduce works in such things as anthologies, paperback editions, course packs, electronic reserves and document delivery services adding to that take.

The AAUP came in for its own share of criticism for not consulting with all its members before firing off the letter -- and for providing a copy of the letter to BusinessWeek before Google had received it. Peter Givler, the AAUP's executive director and the author of the letter, didn't respond to requests for comment.
John Wiley & Sons was one publisher that went directly to Google. "We see potential issues and potential opportunities that could have an impact on our authors, customers and the business," said Susan Spilka, Wiley's director of communications. "Were' talking to them directly and also through our trade association."

She said Wiley is in the process of learning more about the Google Print for libraries program and exploring both the issues and the opportunities.
The crux of the copyright issue, according to Adler, is not whether supplying anywhere from a few sentences to a few pages of a book to searchers is covered by the admittedly murky fair use provisions of U.S. copyright law. Rather, the Library Project seems like a way for Google to profit off books without buying them.
A court date is likely, said Lee Bromberg, a partner in Bromberg & Sunstein, a law firm specializing in intellectual property. The key question, he said, is whether the issue is more like Sony versus Universal City Studios (1984) or like Basic Books versus Kinkos (1991).

In other words, is Google like Sony, providing technology that might be used to infringe copyright but which also has substantial non-infringing uses? Or is it more like Kinkos? In that case, the courts decided that Kinkos violated publishers' copyrights when it reproduced pages from their books and sold them as reading lists to university students -- with the intention of making a profit.
It's a great time to be a lawyer, in any case. Said Bromberg, "Technology seems to continually outpace the copyright law."

Google Uni deal raises privacy fear

A contract between Google and the University of Michigan released publicly on Friday contains no provisions for protecting the privacy of people who will eventually be able to search the school's vast library collection over the internet.
Google announced plans late last year to digitise and index as many as seven million volumes of material from the University of Michigan to make them searchable on the internet as part of its Google Print service, a searchable index of books. Google also has agreements with Harvard, Oxford, the New York Public Library and Stanford, where Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page began their search work before launching their company in 1998.

While the library projects have prompted copyright concerns from university groups and publishers, privacy issues are the latest wrinkle in Google's plans to expand the universe of web-searchable data. Daniel Brandt, founder of the Google-watch.org website, which is highly critical of the search company's policies, said: "I would have hoped that the University of Michigan would be sensitive to the fact that Google tracks everything that everyone searches."

List of the domain names that Google has registered since June 1, 2005.


google-access.com
google-access.info
google-access.net
google-access.org
googleaccess.com
googleaccess.info
googleaccess.net
googleaccess.org ...

AdWords Site Targeting Option Launches

After months of testing with a select group of advertisers, Google has officially unveiled a new AdWords feature that allows the targeting of ads by site. "Now, you can select specific content sites where you want your ads to show. This will allow you to precisely communicate with those individuals who are most likely to be interested in your offerings," explains a product manager on Google's "Inside AdWords" blog.

The Site Targeting option was released to limited advertisers in a beta test in April, and now is available to all advertisers who choose to activate the option on their AdWords account. Advertisers bid for site-targeted campaigns on a CPM basis, and Google uses an algorithm to determine whether a site-targeted ad will appear or a standard keyword-targeted, cost-per-click (CPC) ad will be shown. Though CPC ads are ranked by both bid price and click-through rate, the CPM ads will only be ranked by bid price.

An added feature of a site-targeted campaign is the ability to run animated .gif ads, in addition to the usual text and image ads Google allows on keyword-targeted campaigns. Google has been testing animated ads since the end of last year.
The program seems to be an attempt to attract more brand advertisers to the AdWords program, which has traditionally been seen as a direct response tool. Though the features of the site-targeted ads will make it more attractive for branding ads, many marketers have said there are other hurdles to be overcome before it becomes a viable option.

Google bundles software with WinZip


"In a marketing tactic used primarily by spyware and adware companies, Google has begun bundling its Google Toolbar and Desktop Search software with the popular WinZip archive utility. [...] Users are given the opportunity to opt out of installing the Google software on the first WinZip setup screen; by default the tools are installed."

Google unveils search for small screens


To enable such a feature, Google has crawled the Web for pages built using XHTML and compiled a separate index from its standard search engine.

"How different is it than standard web search? There are sites out there that have already been designed for your mobile phone, which makes them more navigable on the small screen. So we've created an index specifically for these sites," said Google software engineer Steven Schirripa. To access results of pages formatted for mobile devices such as phones and PDAs, users simply type in a search query and choose Mobile Web (beta) as the search option. AOL launched a similar feature in April, which automatically adapts Web pages to the dimensions of small mobile screens.

Google previously offered a number of mobile search capabilities, including local and image searches, and Google SMS - a service that uses text messaging to relay answers.
"Your phone can now be that much more useful," added Schirripa.

Google Toolbar

If you use Internet Explorer, you can get an idea of what Google thinks of how important your site is in general, by downloading the Google Toolbar. The latter is an ActiveX control that installs into IE, and shows the Page Rank of any page that you visit. The toolbar can be obtained from http://toolbar.google.com/

Unfortunately, to obtain the page rank of the pages you visit, the toolbar actually transmits information about the pages you visit to Google. Thus if you are worried about people tracking your Internet activity, you might want to restrict its use to times when you check your site's ranking.

Yahoo! Search Subscriptions (beta)


"Yahoo! Search Subscriptions enables you to search access-restricted content such as news and reference sites that are normally not accessible to search engines."

MSN to offer local-search service


"Microsoft's MSN plans to launch on Tuesday a test version of a local-search function that integrates mapping and satellite image technology to help consumers pinpoint nearby stores and other locales."
Editor's note: MSN Local Search is accessible on the US MSN Search home page.

Google plans pay service to rival PayPal


"Google Inc. this year plans to offer an electronic-payment service that could help the Internet-search company diversify its revenue and may heighten competition with eBay Inc.'s PayPal unit."

Google may build site in Ann Arbor. Search engine scouts look for space for a tech center that could employ up to 1,000.

Ann Arbor may become home to a new technology center for up to 1,000 employees from Google Inc., the Internet search engine giant that was recently hired to digitize the University of Michigan's 19 libraries.
In recent weeks, Google real estate representatives were scouting the Ann Arbor area for up to 75,000 square feet of space for a technology center that would help meet the company's growing demand.
The project could eventually grow to 200,000 square feet of space, real estate officials said.
"We do know a broker representing Google was in town looking for space about three weeks ago," said Chris Martin, vice president for First Martin Corp., an Ann Arbor-based real estate development firm.
"It will be very difficult to find research and technology space in large quantities near U of M, because that area has few vacancies, but there are options nearby."
A real estate survey called the Feldman Report notes Ann Arbor has an 88 percent occupancy rate, one of the highest in the region.
Metro Detroit-area office buildings have posted sizable vacancies in recent years due to the sluggish economy, a downturn in the automotive industry and rising productivity.
"We would welcome any opportunity to work with Google to meet their future expansion needs," said Michael Shore, spokesman for Michigan Economic Development Corp. in Lansing, which helps lure companies to the state with tax breaks and other incentives. "We hope to land as many high-paying technology jobs as we can."
Google spokesman Steve Langdon declined to confirm the project.
"We do not have any plans to announce about facilities in any new locations," Langdon wrote in an e-mail Thursday seeking comment.
Boston and Boulder, Colo., are other cities Google is considering for the project, which seeks to tap communities with a large population of recent college graduates from 22 to 30 years old.
One of Google's founders, Larry Page, earned an engineering degree from U-M. The company is based in Mountain View, Calif., where its headquarters is known as the "Googleplex."
Google is also looking for space to digitize thousands of bound materials within U-M's library system, said John Wilkin, associate university librarian. "I wish we could accommodate them on campus, but we simply don't have the room."
Google personnel are working at U-M's Buhr Remote Shelving Facility, but Wilkin didn't have an exact employee total or the amount of space they were using.
The project began last July, with a goal of finishing in six years, but the work could be done in three years, Wilkin said.
"The goal is to have the libraries digitized within six years, but they may do it in as soon as three years," Wilkin said.
Tim Robinson, vice president of the Washtenaw Development Council, a nonprofit growth organization in Ann Arbor that helps arrange tax incentive programs, has not been contacted by Google representatives.
"Having Google in town would be a boost to our community and the region," he said.
Google, similar to other search engines such as Yahoo! and Ask Jeeves, has gained notoriety in recent years with the growing use of the Internet by businesses, students and families.

AOL adds partners for video search engine


Keeping up in the heated race to build the best video search engine, America Online has signed 10 new content partners, including parent-company property CNN.
AOL's audio and video search engine Singingfish inked partnerships to include searchable video feeds from Atom-Films, CBSNews.com, Hollywood.com, Like Television, ManiaTV.com, MarketWatch and The One Network, among others.
Singingfish, which AOL acquired in late 2003, is one of the Web's oldest multimedia search engines. But in the last year, it's had to quickly build out its service in the face of mounting competition from Yahoo, Google, Blinkx and others.

Now you can add the Yahoo! Search box to your web site!


It's free and easy to set up. We provide HTML that you simply cut and paste into your web site's HTML.
Visitors to your site will be able to use Yahoo! Search to find exactly what they're looking for, faster and easier than ever.
To add the Yahoo! Search box to your site, follow these step-by-step instructions.
Note: Yahoo! reserves the right to place advertisements on all Yahoo! Search result pages.

New search engine detects "hidden" information


"The Federal Aviation Administration is supporting the development of a new search engine by University at Buffalo researchers designed to detect 'hidden' information that can be gleaned from public websites

Microsoft adds tabbed browsing to MSN Search toolbar


"Microsoft [...] made tab browsing available to the masses -- but not via its upcoming Internet Explorer 7 release. The software giant is offering the feature through its MSN Search toolbar instead."

Google readying Web-only video search


But some content providers have reservations about Google's plans to offer and sell searchable video. One content owner, who asked to remain anonymous, said among the details to be ironed out are how much of a video's rights should be granted to Google and how much should be retained by the owner in order to drive traffic to its own site.
One key to easing content providers' concerns will be digital rights management technology that can protect producers' intellectual property, though Google has not revealed details of a DRM solution. Google also has to work with content publishers on labeling their videos, so-called programming meta tags, which make searching for material possible.
To a certain extent, Google is playing catch up. Reuters, for example, also has deals with America Online's Singingfish, Yahoo and Blinkx. It provides all those companies with a video content feed, which includes "meta data" or descriptive language that defines the content for automated indexing by the search engines. In turn, the search engines drive traffic to Reuters.com, which is trying to become a news destination site supported by online advertising.
"For video, advertising is our chosen business model (because) there's a strong demand," said Stephen Smyth, Reuters' vice president of media. "We continue to assess the market and evaluate it for paid models."
Regarding a search deal with Google, Smyth said that the company is "exploring all options," but he declined to comment further.
Another content producer, AtomFilms, has deals with Yahoo and Singingfish to provide feeds of its video, said AtomFilms CEO Mika Salmi. Yahoo, in turn, points Web surfers back to AtomFilms' site. In all cases, Yahoo does not host the video playback on its own servers.
Eventually, Google plans to leapfrog its competitors by creating a "walled garden" of video content hosted on its servers. The content will originate both from independent and A-list video producers, sources say. That way, Google can eventually sell access and video advertising, or online commercials.
Morgan Stanley analyst and Google investor Mary Meeker outlined such a business model for Google at an industry conference in April.
For studios such as Sony Pictures, working with Google Video could be tricky. Studios must get permission from actors and various guilds to show clips of films for promotional purposes. Even then, the amount of material shown is restricted. It would likely be a long time before Google could secure searchable content from major film studios, but several sources have said that the company's executives have approached the film studios to seek approvals.
In a sign of Google's courtship of Hollywood, the company attended the Digital Media Summit in Los Angeles last week. Jennifer Feikin, director of Google Video, acknowledged during a panel discussion that allowing playback of video clips was a complex issue given the copyright concerns and having to vet the content being submitted.
Google has already forged an alliance with former Vice President Al Gore to provide search features for his interactive television project, Current.tv, a 24-hour network with viewer-contributed broadcasts that range in length from 15 seconds to 5 minutes. The project is similar to Google's upload program, but for television.

Google readying Web-only video search

Google is expected to unveil a search engine for Web-only video this summer that will let people preview media clips from its Web site, CNET News.com has learned.
Google's planned service will let visitors find free short-form videos such as the popular "Star Wars" video spoofs, according to sources who asked to remain anonymous. The engine will complement the search giant's existing experimental site that lets people search the closed-caption text of television shows from PBS and CNN, among others, and preview accompanying still images. The new capabilities will let people watch roughly 10 seconds of Web video clips for free before shuttling visitors to the video's host site, sources say.
Sources said the new video search engine will be unveiled within the next two months.
A Google representative declined to comment on the details of the search engine or the exact timing of the launch but acknowledged that a new service is in the works. "All those details are still being worked out," the representative said.
Video search has become a highly competitive field for many Internet companies because it's seen as a valuable new market for online advertising. Google and Yahoo, for example, are looking to expand their multibillion-dollar advertising businesses into videos, which will help them land ad dollars from TV commercial advertisers. Even Amazon.com's search unit, A9.com, is eyeing the video search market, according to one source. A9 could not immediately be reached for comment.
Longer term, Google is preparing a payment system for a premium video service that would let people pay to watch full video clips. Google is talking to several top-tier content providers, including Hollywood movie studios, to gain agreements for aggregating their video and selling premium or pay-per-view access.
"The ultimate endgame is streaming video, otherwise Google can't get video advertising dollars," said one source. "They have to figure a way to get video into their world to capture those dollars."
The Mountain View, Calif.-based search giant outlined plans for a payment service when it launched its video-upload program in April. The program solicits video submissions to Google's searchable video archives, inviting small and major producers alike to submit work and grant copyrights to the company. Google said on its "frequently asked questions" page that it will let content producers host and sell access to their video using Google servers. It has yet to launch the service for public consumption.
The first stage of the video search engine will put Google on par with chief rival Yahoo, which finished work on its own Web video search engine in May, as well as others such as America Online's Singingfish and Blinkx. Unlike Yahoo, which already has submission deals with companies such as Reuters, Google will avoid mining the Internet
Continued ...

Smile for the Google 3D mapping truck


"Google plans to use trucks equipped with lasers and digital photographic equipment to create a realistic 3D online version of San Francisco, and eventually other major US cities."

Miva Inc. unifies Espotting and FindWhat


"MIVA, Inc. [...] announced the launch of its new website - www.miva.com. MIVA, Inc., which previously operated as Espotting and the FindWhat group of companies, also introduced various new products and features."

Search Engines Roll Out New Personalization Options

Over the last 2 weeks, there have been a series of announcements about new personalization options from several major search engines, each offering a different lure to retain searchers. First, Ask Jeeves upgraded MyJeeves, its personal search system. New features include new ways to add data, support for images, and more robust information management capabilities. Then, Yahoo! launched a new beta version of its Yahoo! News that has a streamlined design with easier navigation, plus its “My Sources” personalization feature lets users add news from all over the Web to the front page of Yahoo! News via RSS syndication. Also, Google has just introduced My Search History, a new beta application that keeps track of a registered user’s Web searches and pages viewed from search results. These new personalization options, in addition to features offered by A9.com, AOL, and others, give users a range of choices to match their individual search styles and needs.
Ask Jeeves first introduced MyJeeves in September 2004. MyJeeves allows users to save search results, search history, and links to favorite Web pages and images as they search. These can then be organized into folders, tagged, searched, and shared. The new version lets users:
Add to MyJeeves from the Ask Jeeves toolbars (for both IE and Firefox)
Save links to images and view thumbnails with MyJeeves
Import browser bookmarks
Organize with hierarchical folders, with up to seven levels of subfolders
Add a user’s own searchable metadata tags to any data within MyJeeves
The upgrade represents another step in Ask Jeeves’ personalization strategy. Jim Lanzone, senior vice president of search properties at Ask Jeeves, commented: “In the future, look for MyJeeves integration with both our desktop product and with Bloglines.”

The future of search looks bright


"How the players will evolve as search becomes the top priority for surfers was top of the agenda at this week's Search Engine Strategies conference in London

Google's long memory stirs privacy concerns


"When Google Inc.'s 19 million daily users look up a long-lost classmate, send e-mail or bounce around the Web more quickly with its new Web Accelerator, records of that activity don't go away."

Pulling out the Google thorn


"eBay and Shopping.com have a similar thorn in their sides -- Google. By combining, the two have taken a step to remove that thorn."

Ansearch eyes global launch


"Australian search engine company Ansearch plans to expand its operations into the United States and United Kingdom within six months."

Google begins digitalization


"The popular internet search engine Google formally began its controversial Print for Libraries Project this week, nearly 600 years after Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press."

FindWhat to rebrand as Miva


"The FindWhat and Espotting networks will become Miva Media. This division will manage the company's pay-per-click, pay-per-call and AdRevenue Xpress self-service product, as well as all private label initiatives."

Google launches Google Sitemaps


"We're undertaking an experiment called Google Sitemaps that will either fail miserably, or succeed beyond our wildest dreams, in making the web better for webmasters and users alike. It's a beta 'ecosystem' that may help webmasters with two current challenges: keeping Google informed about all of your new web pages or updates, and increasing the coverage of your web pages in the Google index."
Editor's note: We'll take a closer look at Google Sitemaps in the next issue of this newsletter.

What does this mean to your web site?


The PageRank of a web page shouldn't be the determining factor when optimizing your web site and choosing link partners. A link partner with a low PageRank that has a similar topic like your site will bring you much better visitors than an unrelated link partner with a high page rank.
If you see a good web site with good content that has a low PageRank youshould trade links with that site if that web site is useful for yourvisitors. One day, that page might have a higher PageRank and it will still link back to you.
In addition, the PageRank you see in Google's toolbar is not the PageRank that Google uses for its algorithm. High Google rankings are the result of optimized web page content and good incoming links.

What would happen if Google didn't display the PageRank information anymore?


If the PageRank information wasn't available anymore, webmasters wouldn't concentrate on a little green bar in their web browser but on more substantial factors.
For example, you could ask yourself the following questions if you want to optimize your web site:
Does my web site has enough content that is interesting to web surfers and search engines?
Is my web site linked to other web sites that have similar content that might be interesting to my web site visitors?
Do other web sites with related content link to my web site so that people who are interested in what I have to offer can find my web site?
Does the web page I want to trade links with offer interesting content (no matter what PageRank it might have)?
Ironically, that is exactly what Google expects from webmasters. On its official webmaster pages Google writes: "Make pages for users, not for search engines. [...] Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?".

Is the green PageRank bar really that important?


We explained it in the past in this newsletter. The official PageRank value that Google displays in the toolbar has little value for your ranking.
A Google employee even said that the PageRank meter was only for entertainment purposes. Many web sites with low PageRank have high rankings on Google.

Non-traditional sources cloud Google News results


"Additional research suggests that the search engine's selection of online-only news sources to include in Google News skews its search results toward political extremes."

How to submit your web site to Yahoo, the Open Directory Project and other Internet directories

This special article lists all parts of our special article series about how to submit your web site successfully to Yahoo, the Open Directory Project and other Internet directories.


What is an Internet directory and why should you care?

Have you ever wondered what the difference is between search engines and directories? If you don’t know the difference, then your site may be excluded from major sources of web traffic.
If your site is listed in Internet directories, then it can also have a higher ranking on search engines, for example Google prefers web sites that are listed in the Open Directory Project (dmoz.org).
If your web site is listed in industry specific and regional directories, then it can gain a higher link popularity score which can improve your rankings on other search engines. In addition, directories bring targeted traffic to your web site.
So what is the difference between search engines and directories?
Search engines use software programs to index your web pages, often called robots or spiders. They are programmed to constantly crawl the web in search of new or updated pages. They will go from one page to another until they have visited every web site on the Internet.Every search engine employs different criteria to determine if your web site should be indexed and how well your site should be ranked. The most popular search engines today are Google, AltaVista and AllTheWeb.
Internet directories don't use software programs. They are compiled by humans who organize web sites by subject into categories. If you submit your web site to an Internet directory, your web site will be visited by real people who can decide whether they include your web site or not. The most popular directories are Yahoo and Open Directory Project.

If someone searches on a search engine site, the query must match the words on your web page. If someone searches on a directory site, the query must match the words in the description of your web site in the directory.
A listing in all important Internet directories will have a very positive effect on your web site. If you want best results for your site, you should make sure that your site is listed in all relevant Internet directories.
Next week, we'll tell you how to get listed in Internet directories and which errors you should avoid when submitting to search engines. We'll also tell you where to find the most important directories that are relevant to your web site.
We recommend using IBP 3 to submit your web site to search engines and directories.


How to get listed in Yahoo, DMOZ and other Internet directories


As explained in our last newsletter issue, a good listing in Internet directories can bring your web site a lot of traffic and it will increase the link popularity of your web site.
In general, to get your web site indexed in a directory, you have to submit your site to a particular category. In addition, you have to submit a description of your site. An editor will review your site and then accept or reject your site according to its quality.
Sometimes it's harder to get indexed in Internet directories than to get listed in search engines. There can be a variety of reasons why Internet directories won't list your web site.
If you follow our tips below, it's more likely that your web site will be listed in Internet directories. This will improve your search engine rankings and it will bring more visitors to your site.
The most important tip is: submit your web site to the right category and follow the directory's guidelines carefully.

The most important tip is: submit your web site to the right category and follow the directory's guidelines carefully.
Most directories are very specific. They list only web sites that fit their topic or world region. Even the major general directories are very picky, for example if you have a UK-based site, make sure it's in the appropriate regional category of the directory.
If you submit to Yahoo and your site is commercial, you must submit to the "Business and Economy" category. If you submit to the Open Directory Project (dmoz.org), you must follow these rules: If your site isn't written in English, you must choose the World category, if you have an adult site, you must choose the Adult category, if your site has regional information, take the Regional section.
So before submitting your web site to a directory, read the directory's submit guidelines carefully. Here are the addresses of the major directories and where you can find their guideline pages:
Yahoo: http://www.yahoo.com/docs/info/include.html
Open Directory Project: http://www.dmoz.org/add.html
Zeal: http://www.zeal.com/guidelines/style/
Gimpsy: http://www.gimpsy.com/gimpsy/doc/faq/faq_suggest_site.php
JoeAnt: http://www.joeant.com/guidelines.html

Further directories for the specific topic of your web site can be found at "directory of directory" sites, for example searchenginecolossus.com and beaucoup.com.
Submitting to general directories and industry-specific directories can improve the link popularity score of your web site and so it can improve your search engine rankings.
If you use IBP 3.0 to submit your web site to search enginesand Internet directories, then you already have all important general directories and industry-specific directories at your fingertips.
Next week, we'll tell you how to get your web site description accepted by the Internet directory editors.

"Copyright Axandra.com - Web site promotion software tools."

A Google project pains publishers


"The major presses are raising thorny legal issues with the search giant's initiative to digitize the books of the world's great libraries."

Attorneys seek advertisers for click fraud class action


"The attorneys have a pending class action suit in the circuit court of Miller County, Arkansas. Plaintiffs in the case are Lane's Gifts and Collectibles and Caulfield Investigations, while the named defendants include Google, Yahoo!, Lycos, AskJeeves, FindWhat.com, Buena Vista Internet Group, LookSmart, America Online, Netscape and Time Warner."

Google CEO defends privacy policies


"Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt acknowledged that his company's search engine can ruffle privacy feathers [...] Many people are disturbed to find their home phone number. But we found it because it was a public piece of information."

Seekport UK-specific search engine moves out of beta phase


"[Seekport returns] UK-relevant content from nine out of every ten searches. This contrasts significantly with the ‘three out of ten’ performance from US search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN Search."

Espotting wins deals with Lycos in Scandinavia


"Espotting Media, a leading European paid listings provider, today announces that it has renewed its agreement with 2 major sites in Scandinavia - Spray in Sweden and Jubii in Denmark, both of which are owned by Lycos."

Ask Jeeves Buys Excite Europe


"The acquisition of Excite Europe will give [Ask Jeeves] ownership of Excite's Internet domains throughout Europe as well as control of existing portal offerings in several major European markets including Spain, Italy, France, Britain, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands.
Ask Jeeves will also have the ability to extend its search technology to Excite Europe users."

Google introduces personalised home pages


"In what appears to be a broadside aimed at MyYahoo, Google rolled out a new feature on Thursday that lets people set up a personalised Google home page.
The feature [...] lets people with Gmail and other Google accounts create a home page with different modules that they can drag and drop across their page, giving them one place to go for e-mail, headlines, weather reports, maps, movie schedules and, of course, Web search."

Get better results with your Google Adwords


If your AdWords pay per click campaigns don't return a positive return on investment (ROI) or if you're paying too much for your PPC ads, take a look at our new Google AdWords eBook.
Find out how to lower your advertising costs while increasing your profit.

Get better search engine rankings with IBP 8!


The final IBP 8 version is now available. The new IBP version is twice as powerful as the old IBP 4 version, that's why we called it IBP 8.
IBP 8 has many new features:
Link Popularity Improver
Web Site Optimization Editor
Scheduler to automate ranking checks and submissions
Keyword Editor with special Google AdWords support
Pay Per Click Search Engine Manager
enhanced project management: one project for all tools
you can work on multiple projects at once
better report customization
complete new user interface to support the new features
Of course, IBP 8 still offers the powerful Search Engine Submitter, the unique Top 10 Optimizer, the Ranking Checker and all other features of previous IBP versions.
IBP 8 helps you to get more visitors, more customers and more sales. Marketing experts and webmasters recommend IBP. Just take a look at the free demo version.

Yahoo? Since when do we talk about Yahoo?


"I have been unable to ignore the barrage of news stories concerning Yahoo lately. I feel like Yahoo is suddenly going to pounce and become a 'really big deal' again."

Internet search firms target music business


"The amount of digital music, video and other entertainment content available on the Internet is at an all-time high, but finding something compelling is getting harder than ever."

Why middle market engines are missing the boat


"Middle market players have given up on their interest to be portals and have joined the ranks of DoubleClick and others as mere ad serving technologies. They have abandoned the collection of traffic they can 'own' by offering valuable services to web users, and sought out partners who can bring them the traffic they need in order to stay afloat."

The Starbucks of the Internet


"I think Google has become so mainstream and so ubiquitous in our everyday Internet lives that its lost its mojo in some ways. That doesn't mean it won't continue to be hugely relevant, hugely profitable, and hugely important. But it does mean that there's a vacuum that can get filled by others who are small, innovative, new, and exciting."

Proposition from an Indian ad-clicker


"India has spawned an innovative business called ad clicking fraud [...] Here's an email exchange I had earlier this week with a representative of an Indian ad clicking syndicate."

Jury fails to determine validity of Yahoo! ad tech patent


"The patent dispute over bid-for-placement technology between Yahoo! Search Marketing and FindWhat.com resulted in a mistrial [...] Parts of the case could still be decided by a judge next month."

Google and MSN Do China


"Even as MSN said that it was launching operations in China, sources close to Google revealed Thursday that the search giant has won a license to operate there and is recruiting employees."

Microsoft launches desktop search tool


"Microsoft [...] released the finalized version of its desktop search tool, taking aim at Google Inc. and other rivals in the increasingly competitive search market."

Yahoo! Shortcuts: find it fast


"A Yahoo! Shortcut is a quick way to use web search to get to the information you want, ideally faster than combing through the web results. Shortcuts results appear automatically when they're relevant to your search and link to content on Yahoo! or across the web."

How to optimize your web site for Google's ranking algorithm


Detailed information on how to react to the different ranking factors can be found in the previous five issues of this newsletter.
Remember that this patent doesn't mean that Google really uses all of this. The patent only lists options that might be used by Google in addition to their main ranking algorithm.
The most important factors for high rankings on Google are good incoming links and optimized web page content. You should make sure that your web site has both if you want high rankings on Google.

Miscellaneous factors that can influence your Google rankings:


web pages with frequent ranking changes might be considered untrustworthy
keywords that have little change in the result pages are probably matched to domains with stable rankings
keywords with many changes in the results are probably matched to domains with more votality

Search results and user behavior might influence your Google rankings:


the volume of searches over time is recorded and monitored forincreases
the information regarding a web page's rankings are recorded and monitored for changes
the click through rates are monitored for changes in seasonality, fast increases, or other spike traffic
the click through rates are monitored for increase or decrease trends
the click through rates are monitored to find out if stale or fresh web pages are preferred for a search query
the click through rates for web pages for a search term is recorded
the traffic to a web page is recorded and monitored for changes
the user behavior on web pages is monitored and recorded for changes(for example the use of the back button etc.)
the user behavior might also be monitored through bookmarks, cache, favorites, and temporary files
bookmarks and favorites are monitored for both additions and deletions
the overall user behavior for documents is monitored for trend changes
the time a user spends on a web page might be used to indicate the quality and freshness of a web page

How Google might rate the links to your web site:


the anchor text and the discovery date of links are recorded
the appearance and disappearance of a link over time might be monitored
the growth rates of links as well as the link growth of independent peer documents might be monitored
the changes in the anchor texts over a given period of time might be monitored
the rate at which new links to a web page appear and disappear might be recorded
the distribution rating for the age of all links might be recorded
links with a long life span might get a higher rating than links with a short life span
links from fresh pages might be considered more important
if a stale document continues to get incoming links, it will be considered fresh
Google doesn't expect that new web sites have a large number of links
if a new web site gets many new links, this will be tolerated if some of the links are from authorative sites
Google indicates that it is better if link growth remains constant and slow
Google indicates that anchor texts should be varied as much as possible
Google indicates that burst link growth may be a strong indicator of search engine spam

Your Google rankings can also be influenced by your domain name:


the length of the domain registration (one year vs. several years)
the address of the web site owner, the admin and the technical contact
the stability of data and host company
the number of pages on a web site (web sites must have more than one page)

Google might use the following to determine the ranking of your pages:


the frequency of web page changes
the amount of web page changes (substantial or shallow changes)
the change in keyword density
the number of new web pages that link to a web page
the changes in anchor texts (the text that is used to link to a web page)
the number of links to low trust web sites (for example too many affiliate links on one web page)

'Google power' under fire


"What are the wider implications for marketers of Google's dominance? [...] Google, however, fervently denies the implication of such murmurings and that it is failing to look after its advertisers as well as its users."

MSN Search share anyone's guess


"Is MSN gaining or losing search share to Google in North America? Yes and no. It depends who you ask. But it may not matter. [...] Searchers are looking at more than one search engine when making queries."

"Internet search giant Google's engine sputtered briefly over the weekend when its Web site blacked-out, leaving millions of visitors looking for answers elsewhere."

Google's new tools: proceed with caution


"Before you embrace all of Google's new technologies, consider the privacy implications. Google's stuff is great, Fred Langa says, but don't get carried away with the novelty of it all."

Google speed bump draws scorn


"Google has raised privacy and security hackles once again, this time by developing an application that accelerates Web surfing but can also delete pages or serve up password-protected content."

Yahoo stokes search engine rivalry by propelling video search


"Yahoo's engine searches both the Web and the content of its media partners and those companies that distribute video via Media Really Simple Syndication, a self-publishing specification that enables publishers to distribute audio and video to Web-content aggregators."

Yahoo developing an audio search engine


"Web giant Yahoo is developing a search engine for finding downloadable songs and music data from across the Internet. [...] The specialty engine will let people search on an artist's name, for example, and retrieve all the available songs from other music services, as well as album reviews and band information from Yahoo Music."

Google Web Accelerator considered overzealous


"The accelerator scours a page and prefetches the content behind each link. This gives the illusion of pages loading faster (since they’ve already been pre-loaded behind the scenes). Here’s the problem: Google is essentially clicking every link on the page — including links like 'delete this' or 'cancel that.'
And to make matters worse, Google ignores the Javascript confirmations. [...] Google ignores it and performs the action anyway."

Google's accelerator breaks web apps, security


"Google officials Friday confirmed that the company was aware of as many as five sites where Web Accelerator was returning users cached pages under other people's user names."

Google launches web accelerator tool


"Google has launched a new tool that has been designed to increase the speed of a users broadband connection. Called the Google Web Accelerator, the new downloadable application will supposedly use the power of Google’s global computer network to allow pages to load faster on a users machine."
Editor's note: We recommend that you read the articles below about Google's web accelerator before installing it on your computer.

PART 2: How to keep Web surfers on your site


Last week, we told you which three critical points your Web site must pass before Web surfers even consider taking a look at your Web page. This week, we're telling you what you can do to keep these visitors on your site.

1. Come straight to the point
Your home page is the most important page on your site. It's the very first page of your site and the page that people see first when they come to your site. Therefore, it's important that your home page is interesting for your visitors.
Every visitor wants to get a prompt answer to the question "what's in it for me?". On the first paragraph of your home page, you should tell your visitors the following:


what you do
why people should stay on your site
what's in for your visitors
If you don't answer these questions quickly enough, people will go away.
Of course, every home page owner is convinced that they have the best product on earth and that everybody should buy it. Unfortunately, visitors don't know that.
If you don't tell them the major benefits of your product, no one will take the time to dig into your site. Web surfers are a very impatient group.

2. Don't annoy your visitors with animations they cannot see
Some people use Flash animations or big pictures with a meaningless text such as "Welcome to the world of tomorrow" as their index page that redirects to their actual first page. Don't do that if you don't want to lose a big part of your visitors.
Flash intros take minutes to load on a slow modem connection so most Web surfers will go away before they even had a chance to see your actual home page.
In addition, Web pages containing only a Flash animation cannot be indexed by most search engines. If you use a Flash intro as your index page, chances are that your site will never show up on search engines.

3. Respect people's time
Until high-speed Internet access becomes widespread, don't use large bandwidth-clogging graphics.
As a rule of thumb, no single graphic should be larger than 30 KB to 50 KB, and no single page should have more than 200 KB of graphics.
If you must include a large, detailed image, provide your visitors a smaller, thumbnail version so they know if seeing the larger image is worth their time.

4. Test with different Web browsers
Not all Web surfers use Microsoft's Internet Explorer in version 6. It's important to test your Web site with different Web browsers.
Try to test your Web site with Internet Explorer version 5.0, Mozilla/Netscape and Opera.

5. Be consistent
Professional Web sites always have their navigational bar at the same side. They use a consistent style for headlines, headers and text. Don't use more than three different fonts in different sizes.
Try to avoid colored or textured backgrounds. They make text difficult to read. Of course, dancing buttons and blinking text don't belong to a professional Web site, either.
Once Web surfers have decided not to go away on their first impulse, you have to keep them with a good sales copy.

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