Go Go Google Print Ads
According to a CNet article (that may earn them another year in the doghouse) Google's selling PC Magazine and Maximum PC print ads to their existing AdWords advertisers.
WOW. What with the recent (and unresolved to my knowledge) rumors of Yahoo, Google and eBay vying for a major print classified publisher we're beginning to see some strong indicators of Google's advertising direction. Which I'd basically describe as behemoth.
You've heard the rumors of Google commandeering major search marketing accounts. This aggressive behavior plus the gradual creeping into print indicates to me a distant-future marketing console that merges online, print, radio, television etc and pushes agencies aside. Maybe I'm getting a little too Googlezon here.
Google Purge Launches: Deleting the Un-Indexible
Got word of this disturbing story from some sharp-eyed co-workers. Heaven help us if the news is true. "Book burning is just the beginning," said Google co-founder Larry Page.
Baidu Chosen Over Google in China
Six months ago Google had the largest market share in Chinese cites Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.
According to the Chinese Internet Network Information Center Google got spanked in the last six months. in Beijing Baidu 52% Google 33%
in Shanghai Baidu 43.9% Google 38.2%
in Guangzhou Baidu 48% Google 28.7%
Google's usage has not dropped, according to the CNNIC. It's the new internet users in the areas who choose Baidu over Google who are driving Baidu's growth.
Assuming we can trust CNNIC's data, why isn't Google's brand driving adoption in China? Something to do with government controlled media? Does Google just not translate?
Semantic Clusters or Search Engine Head Hunting?
The main thing Jim's flipping about over at Ask right now is what he calls their Zoom feature, which enables searchers to zoom in and out semantically.
One of the Ask searches he was proudest of was for Civil War. Look on the right where Ask lists related names (third section down). Those are all pulled algorithmically, based on Teoma's understanding of semantic networks.
So I was just thinking that maybe Google's not actually advertising to hire Susan Dumais, but rather associates her name with NLP and posts ads based on its semantic understanding of the NLP "community".
OK this manual research is getting boring. Someone please write an app that can pull the names from MSN's researcher directory and check to see if there are any ads for Google jobs.
And my unscientific preliminary conclusion is that yes, Google's advertising on Susan Dumais' name.
I didn't see any "we're hiring" ads for [NLP] or [NLP jobs].
Significant? Only in the lengths to which Google will go to hire talent (which reminds me of Jim's theory that hiring is marketing - look, Google just got ANOTHER post about how they hire the best scientists around - and the PU post on how everything is marketing.)
Link Building is the FUN Part of SEM
I appreciated Rand's post today about unconventional link building ideas.
While I'm not sure a "link to us" button is that unconventional, his advice that you pick a site you'd like a link from, analyze what content they're missing and actually create that content yourself to get them to link to you is interesting.
That concept, expanded a bit, should basically define your overall link building strategy.
For me that's the fun part of SEM - analyzing the content that exists and finding ways that a company can genuinely contribute to its industry community.
Why is this fun for me? I guess it's partly my editorial background and my love of talking with business owners about what they're passionate about: that's where the best content ideas come from.
Though I'm not sure Jamie at Channel9 deliberately set out to generate links, he certainly contributed something to the search industry with his GooglePark comic.
The comic itself is an example of something the search industry lacked: creative insider comics. I want more! (more haha for you)
If you're stuck on content/link development ideas let me suggest you lock yourself in a room for 48 hours with your link building team and rev up your whiteboard. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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August 29, 2005
I Drank Yummy Ask Jeeves Kool Aid
I spoke with Jim Lanzone today. I felt like the kid who has always liked airplanes talking to Orville Wright.
I have four typed pages of notes, enough stuff for several posts and I'll likely be publishing it in bits and pieces over the next few days.
My biggest takeaway was the strategy behind their results pages and a slightly better understanding behind their core technology. Plus I got to air my pet "smart boxes/suggestions as relevance patch" theory with someone who, uh, knows what the F he's talking about. I'll be sharing some of that too.
So yeah we talked quite a bit about vertical and personalized search, the products Jim's putting up around his search results, the Ask innovation strategy and life after Diller.
After talking with Jim I'm far more likely to use Ask. It's like when you meet someone in a band you haven't listened to that much or an artist whose work you've always known about but never really investigated: I now have a personal connection and I'm that much more interested in using Ask.
To me it's now Jim's search engine, for which I will change my search behaviors (I'm switching home page from Google to Ask for the week to see what happens :). Plus I kind of like the scrappy underdogs (and there's a bloglines link from the main Ask page - I'm on bloglines way more than any search engine).
Ok, so I'll have some more Ask stuff up soon, and oh yeah I owe you guys some AOL Gerry Campbell stuff too :) Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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August 25, 2005
Yahoo Search Services: "Can't insert page '/acctStatus.do'"
An informant who asked to be called Mr. X sent me the following data from his Yahoo Search Marketing login:
"Can't insert page '/acctStatus.do' : EJB Exception: ; nested exception is: javax.ejb.EJBException: nested exception is: weblogic.jdbc.extensions.PoolLimitSQLException: weblogic.common.resourcepool.ResourceLimitException: Configured maximum limit of (10) on number of threads allowed to wait for a resource reached for pool epsPool"
He indicated that he got this error every other login or so, and that when he was in the system it was running slowly.
I Got Google Talk Spammed
It was probably my fault for accepting his gTalk invitation. Anyways, here's my first encounter with gTalk spam:
Garrett: yo who is this gtalkSpammer: hi ! Garrett: hello! who are you? gtalkSpammer: Can please visit http://www.gtalkSpammersite.info and post your VoIP offers ?! Garrett: what? gtalkSpammer: me from http://www.gtalkSpammersite.info support... I found you in a voip forums Wish you join our forum and add your company to our directory.... Garrett: I'm not interested in doing that and my company doesn't do anything with VOIP gtalkSpammer: oh......ok..... Thanks for your valuable time... Garrett: you're welcome where did you get my address from again? gtalkSpammer: http://www.searchenginelowdown.com/ Garrett: and you thought because I was writing about google talk that I should visit your forum? who else are you contacting this way? gtalkSpammer: i didn't read your full post... I just search voip related gmail users to invite them!
Anyone else gotten hit this way? Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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Price on Image/Audio Search Developments
I've been working on a Google roundup post and got suddenly sick of writing about them. Then I kicked back and read a couple great posts from Gary Price on image and audio search.
First he points to Cydral, a French image search engine that enables users to find visually similar images. It kinda sorta works.
A friend uses image search in his post-doc microbiology work, and we talked a little last night about the complexities of a machine performing vision recognition.
It didn't seem like Cydral would have much academic use, but there was some kind of shape/texture recognition going on when I clicked on the search for similar images link.
I'm not real impressed. Gary thinks we'll see the "find similar image" function soon at "major image search engines near you."
I'm not seeing any immediate marketing use here, but it's interesting to see search engines move beyond text/tags to actually recognizing images. Flikr's maybe doing something along these lines?
He also reviewed Yahoo's recently released audio search:
"It's a one-stop, comprehensive service that allows the user to search, find, and access both open web audio files (via a Yahoo crawl) AND audio files from numerous music/audio (fee-based) services from Yahoo's own Music Unlimited, iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody, Emusic, GarageBand.com, and several other services. Of course, to download these tracks you'll need to pay."
"Sloverture" Stopped, Started Again
I got a call yesterday from a source who prefers to remain unnamed. "Sloverture's down," he told me. Sloverture's his name for, yeah, Overture. You might know it as Yahoo Search Marketing.
And it was down until - my sources say - about midnight last night.
Word is that no data was lost, just had limited access to the direct traffic center. Which has some folks pissed (off - not drunk).
My sources indicate that the DTC's now a little fasterture.
How will Yahoo handle this delicate situation? Rebates for those who couldn't manage their accounts?
Google Talk: Day 1 (I Like It)
I spent a great deal of last night either talking about or using Google Talk. And I'm actually not sick of it yet, just looking forward to chatting more with old friends (hey Gi!). I've never downloaded a chat client on my at-home machine, so I'd never chatted... socially. I mean, chatted and surfed to pages relating to conversation. I IM'd friends for like 3 hours. It was... nice.
I like the integration with gmail. I'm a gmail-only person, and it was good to see all my friends automatically listed as chat buddies.
No Chat Log???
One issue - I had a good long chat about buildering and then closed the window. There were tons of good links in the conversation and lots of fun, ridiculous names for our new buildering crew (we're heading out on Saturday in downtown Raleigh). From what I can tell I lost the conversation when I closed the window - even though I also have Google Desktop.
Google Desktop records/indexes AIM conversations, but not Google Talk? DANG IT!
Google Talk/email Delivering Social Search?
This got me thinking too about the info-richness of chat sessions. Logging and indexing the search/chat/email behavior of a given Google Talk network, while a blatant invasion of privacy, could deliver true social search, and a previously unknown level of relevance.
Yeah I could recruit friends and join a social search site, but why should I when all I have to do to increase the relevance of my search results is use chat and email every day?
Remainders: Yahoo, MSN, Lycos, NCSA: Not Our Study, AdSense Changes, Coolest Toy Ever
The coffee wore off. Now there's only the jitters over tomorrow's Google Talk. Please be tomorrow. I just want to get this over with.
Oh yeah, here are some other important news items:
Ask Jeeves Has Smarter SERPS Too
On the heels of Matt's blogged mention of their increasingly intelligent SERPs the Ask Jeeves blog reminds us of their now smarter SERPS:
"We've been quietly upgrading our Smart Answer platform and have managed to really crank out a ton of useful feature additions around popular search requests."
Steve Orr then goes on in a paragraph with search result links to show the new Jeeves smartness but I don't know Jeeves well enough to know what's actually new.
So thank goodness there's a cheat sheet: "World Nations: Quick Facts, US States: Quick Facts, Mammals, Popular TV Shows information, Famous People: Music profiles, Video Games: All major titles plus platform, NASCAR: Races & Drivers, ISBN Search, Periodic Table of Elements, US Area Code lookup, Planets: Quick Facts, Special Search Toolbar feature support."
I haven't seen anything from them on Google Talk. Maybe they're testing it or something. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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The Search Behavior of Wireless Purchasers
Observing 2 million people and surveying 785 wireless subscribers over a year, Yahoo and analytics firm Compete found that:
37% of shoppers said search influenced them more than any other channel when buying a wireless product 72% more people searched for wireless products this year than last 70% of people who bought phones offline used online research before buying 61% of people said they expect wireless brand leaders to be in the top three results
"By year's end 23.9 million consumers will perform a search online for wireless service, representing over $12.6 billion in potential annual service revenue."
"According to a person who has seen the service, Google plans to let users chat using more than just their keyboards. Like similar programs from competitors, Google Talk also will let computer users with a headset have voice conversations with other computer users with headsets, this person said."
"Om and others have found that Google is running a Jabber client, for example, and speculate that Google is about to introduce a VOIP/IM meta client that works with multiple IM clients."
"we've found a Jabber server listening on port 5222 of 'talk.google.com'" and "port 5222 is open and 'talk.google.com' shares server with 'toolbar.google.com'"
Loren Baker has an excellent Google Talk write up (with a little, uh, giddy speculating in italics at the end: "Could Google be adding video capabilities to its Google Talk Messenger that would make the software worth downloading and using?").
And then there's Loren's sudden chilling fear that Google Talk is a hoax. (I doubt it.) "Is the Google Talk subdomain a decoy to generate buzz around an imaginary Google Messaging product while Google goes off and launches some music download service or Wi-Fi mega ISP?"
Malik wraps it up in short and compelling order. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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Yahoo, MapQuest Cold Smokin Google Maps Market Share
As a fairly new Raleigh transplant (1 yr) I find myself using online maps all the time. I have OCD too and really really really like to know exactly where I'm going, exactly where I have to turn, and what the terrain will look like when I get there (why I like Google maps so much with their hybrid view).
ZDNet cited to a recent Hitwise study that showed map market share for the week ending July 23rd:
Far more interesting than the current share would be a look at how map share has shifted since Google launched their mapping service and from which other service they've drawn their users. Have you seen anything like this Gary?
So this map mind share stuff is so cool because maps will be one of the componants of good local search, which will devestate the printed yellow pages. And it's interesting that Yahoo has the bulk of map searches, especially with their recent advances with Yahoo local, which will highlight local reviews and fold those results in with phone numbers and directions.
I have to say it one more time: that's so frikkin smart.
Google's been focusing on desktop share instead of local (from what I can tell). They're pretty much getting smoked in local right now.
That said I still use Google maps when I'm checking for the 150th time how to get to my friend's house in Durham that I've been to 19 times already.
Other Stuff: Search on Sony's PSP, Ask Jeeves, Technorati Slammed, More
Which search engine's partnering with Sony's PSP? Rumor provided by TW
Om Malik, of Google Wi-Fi rumor fame, has one about Ask Jeeves. "My sources tell me that Ask Jeeves has struck up a deal with P2P social sharing company, Grouper." via TW.
Price found a blogger update designed in part to quell "splog," Cuban's word for a "spam blog." Now you can flag your competitors' blogs as "questionable" and get them investigated by the blogger team.
Technorati taking a-list blogger fire. Philipp uses Technorati to show responses to Kotke's complaints.
Crusty spotted real actual Ask Jeeves ads in the wild.
Meckler's not bitter about proteges' success. No way not him. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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Yahoo, eBay, Google in "Talks" with Print Classified Publisher
Trader Classified Media = from Gary, "a publisher of 78 print guides and runs 56 Web sites with classified ads for shoppers in 22 countries."
From one of his sources: "a Euronext-listed owner of 575 print titles, ranging from Canada's Auto Trader magazine to Buy & Sell Chinese in the US..."
This would be 3 major online-only companies (I guess you could call them ecommerce or something) trying to get into print advertising. That's got to be some kind of a big deal. Though I think Yahoo had a lifestyle print mag there for awhile.
Why Trader Classified though - aren't there enough classified networks to go around? And when's the new print classified bidding model going live?
Google Desktop Update Just in Time for Google IM
So I'm trying to figure out what's got everyone so slippery about this new Google Sidebar without actually downloading it and slowing down my computer with still more spyware useful tools from search engines.
I dig Gary Price. And here's the cool stuff from his ginormous (and recommended)Google Sidebar post.
So this is a rerelease of the desktop tool. The major change here is the Sidebar, which has 8 movable, customizable boxes that can pipe in your favorite feeds, your gmail, your Outlook, pictures, stocks, etc. (Oh yeah and a search box.)
And there's an API so that developers can customize new Google sidebar tools. If anything it will be some new mashup hack that will get me using the Google sidebar, and as far as brilliant ideas go enabling your fans to build new tools for your products is pretty f-ing smart etc.
So. I imagine the new Google IM will slide neatly and comfortably into the Google sidebar.
Here's the NYTimes quote that has me spreading yummy Google IM rumors:
"Google executives say they plan to unveil on Wednesday a "communications tool" that is potentially a clear step beyond the company's search-related business focus."
Update: JenSense details the AdSense plug in for the sidebar. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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Cutts on Smarter SERPS: Giving Relevancy a BE
Cutts wrote about Google's SERPs over the weekend and the little patches Google's applying until users get comfortable enough sharing information for search to get behavioral.
He mentions the recent misinformed rumpus regarding paid results appearing in Google's organic section (like finding velveta in the cheese section at Whole Foods): "an SEO firm based in New York claimed this was 'breaking news' and implied that Google was interspersing ads into natural search results."
One, um, interesting relevancy note about his "better queries" post, he illustrates with a user query for [to be or not to be]. The SERP suggestion is for ["to be or not to be"]. And the second result there in his screen captured illustration is for more information on barium enemas. Because BE apparently stands for "barium enema." Nice.
Matt's posts are mostly important for those following SERP evolutions (which I guess is most of us). And, well, if you're an SEM targeting terms that trigger algorithmic suggestions (such as, say, for your barium enema site ;) it's even more important to be in the top 3.
It's refreshing to hear about the developments from the horse's mouth - I'd definitely like to read about SERP developments directly from MSN, Yahoo and Jeeves. Also, is there a blog out there just for SERP developments? I'd eat their feed (duh I already read SEW, TW, and ResearchBuzz et al).
Search Spammers: Watch That Wiley Cutts Guy
A warning to search spammers: Matt Cutts has ways of making you talk.
If he can't get you drunk enough to spill your tactics he'll introduce you to Larry and Sergey. Yes, the Google Gods. Then your mind will turn to mashed potatoes and you'll hand over your little black spammer book.
Search Remainders: Mobile Search, eBay Misspelling Search and IBM No Major Mobile Search Revenues in Near Term "Significant revenues in the near term are not realistic. Ad-supported models are difficult as local content is scarce. 411 information and local search rise to the top of the list in terms of consumer interest in mobile content services, but, for now at least, they are at the top of a list of services with few paying subscribers." link
Search Misspelled EBay Listings Cool vertical FatFingers lets you search for misspellings on eBay. Great for you bargain hunters out there.
IBM Search Stuff for Smart People I think smart people would really like reading this post from infoworld's Jon Udell. It's all about: "The UIMA software provides a framework for coordinating many different text analyzers. Each runs as a service that consumes and produces data in common formats. Applications are composed by declaratively combining sets of analyzers."
Hitwise: Ladies Love the Jeeves; 87% of Searches 1-2 Keywords
For some reason when I read this MediaPost article on the Hitwise study my brain stops. I think the data's hard to pull out of paragraphs or it's time for my meds. I couldn't find the original report so I yanked what I could make sense of. Here's the deets:
Study period: four weeks ending July 16th (short!)
MSN had highest proportion of users over 55. Google appealed most to households with income over $100K.
87% of Searches at Google, MSN and Yahoo! use 2 or fewer keywords. 69% of AskJeeves searches use 2 or fewer keywords.
Shopping and Classifieds sites were the most visited sites upon leaving the SERPS.
Ask Jeeves sent 15.05% shopping. Yahoo sent 11.24% Google sent 10.68% MSN sent 10.65%
Of course, the overall traffic driven by each site's still governed by overall searches, as I'm sure Dr. Vlad would point out.
I've not reviewed the data or their methodologies and would love to take a look at the study. Hitwise. I'd love to see it. Call me: 919-433-3139. Or send it here: selowdown@gmail.com.
Yahoo: No VoIP for You, Blasted by Economist, Rocking Out, PPC Peek-a-Boo Naughty Rashtchy! No More Links for You! Yahoo killed the Yahoo-launching-VoIP rumor. "'The rumor from the financial analyst is not true,' Terrell Karlsten, a Yahoo spokeswoman, told internetnews.com." Another one bites the dust. Now what of BL's Murdoch buying Yahoo thing? Or whatever it was ;) via TW
Jupiter's David Card Reads the Economist So we don't have to. Apparently the Economist delivered some hard jabs at Yahoo which Card suspects "is yet another example of Google-worship leavened with long-tail oversimplification."
Check out his summary of the Economist points and his refutations. Oh and read the article if you want (sub required).
Google: Size, Geico, MSN, Maps, AdWords
Here's the day's news and views on Google. I promise that if anything big breaks I will write about it first thing tomorrow.
Google: "hey guys we have uh, well, a very slightly larger index now" HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! The size story won't die. Gary Price reveals that Google contacted them before Yahoo's size announcement with a now drop-in-the-bucket-seeming increase of 110 million pages.
Google: "GEICO Got Nada in the Ruling Y'all" Google's VP and General Counsel's take on the Geico ruling: the judge "stated that GEICO's own evidence 'refutes the allegation that the use of the trademark as a keyword, without more, causes a likelihood of confusion.' That is a clear signal that Google's policy on trademarks and keywords is lawful." Yeah biaaatch!
Google Dancing Across MSN Stage Gartenberg on Google making nice with the MSN platform to extend their reach. He asks, pointedly, "Where is the MSN Spaces tool for Word?"
Search Satisfaction, Google's Mobile App Development Purchase, Blog Zombies Attacking
So here's today's search news, hand picked, sun dried:
Search Satisfaction Levels Danny's got a great post and graph showing satisfaction levels for the fantastic five over the past four years. Google's Android Purchase BusinessWeek has the goods:
"In a 2003 interview with BusinessWeek, just two months before incorporating Android, Rubin said there was tremendous potential in developing smarter mobile devices that are more aware of its owner's location and preferences."
So the new Google cell phone will integrate into Google Maps, right? (via)
Google Blog Hoopla An enhanced (how?) Froogle Mobile Blogging directly from MS Word so you can spell check.
Oodle: Local Classified Search From their press release: "Oodle covers everything from Cars.com, Craigslist and the New York Times to Trucker-to-Trucker, MyKidsCloset and the Greenwich Time." Available in 22 US cities. Maps for housing listings according to SEW.
AdSense Blog Launches Here it is. Off to a roaring one post start. And... "you can look forward to posts around 2-3 times a week from an assortment of Googlers involved in the operation of AdSense – engineers, product managers, product marketing managers, and operations staff." (via)
Google the Movie Gary watches what urls Google registers (most recently of note GoogleMovieReviews.com and GoogleShowTime.com) and speculates. TW readers scoff.
Google and Geico "Google is pondering whether to settle a trademark-infringement lawsuit with Geico after a judge ruled for Google regarding one part of the case but against it in another..." MVox
Cuban's BlogSpam "Zombies" Keeping BlogSpot Out of IceRocket "Google seems to be working hard to adjust their relevancy indexes to exclude splog from having influence on search rankings, but they dont seem to be doing anything more than removing reported splogs. Kind of like going after the zombies one at a time with a shovel."
Man I love that imagery. Via Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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Yahoo! Local: Collaborative Local Content
I caught Battelle's excited-about-Yahoo!-local bug. I couldn't help it. Here's what got me excited:
"Levine [head of Yahoo Local Search] called Yahoo Local an emergent 'collective wiki for local.'"
So that's the concept in a nutshell, but it's how he describes his user experience that makes me think Yahoo's moving in an important (with a capital I) direction.
"...as a user I get the sense that the more I put into Yahoo Local (or any number of other well considered sites), the more I get out. I'm motivated to use it not simply because I get some information, find a phone number, get driving directions, but also because I sense I am contributing, through my clickstream, to the creation of a smarter service which will serve be [sic] better in the future."
It's the melding of user generated content into the local/map search that gets me excited. Yahoo's providing the trellis for all this incredible and detail-rich LOCAL user content to grow up around.
Combine local with Yahoo360 and you'll have some seriously rich content for local search (I just think of the mountains of local data in MySpace...).
Yahoo Local could become about 10,000X more useful to me than a phone book. It's not yet, but they just started.
From a marketing perspective Yahoo Local's vital, and points to a future of still smaller audience fragmentation. So get out there and uh, massage your reviews like marketers do in Wikipedia.
UIUC Study Casts Doubt on Yahoo's Index Claims
In doing my part to perpetuate the who's biggest rumpus, here's some research from UIUC that concludes:
"It is the opinion of this study that Yahoo!'s claim to have a web index of over twice as many documents as Google's index is suspicious."
Check out their methodologies - they looked at the long tail terms with fewer than 1000 results which, in my opinion, is not likely to indicate very accurately the size of the beast those tails are attached to.
Anywho, just a little more fuel for the fire Danny's trying to dampen and John finds important.
thx to our very own Interactive Engineer Steve Foster. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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August 16, 2005
KnowIT Back at Me: KnowledgeStorm Talks KnowIT's Future
I gave KnowledgeStorm's KnowIT a light roasting recently and invited their PR folks to get in touch with me and change my opinion. Laurie Hood, their VP of Marketing called me up and I ended up chatting up my old homie Jeff Coyle, who's the KnowIT product manager.
While they didn't change my opinion of where KnowIT is now (though they reminded me several times that it's beta, so chill dude), they did get me all excited about what's coming. And made me promise not to talk about it.
"Our preference is that you keep the future direction aspects of the discussion confidential at this time for competitive reasons."
DangIT!
Here's what they agreed that I can talk about:
Futures - As a next step you can expect to see greater integration between KnowIT and KnowledgeStorm allowing a user to more seamlessly search the content within the KnowledgeStorm Solution and Research Directory as well as the indexed technology-related sites on KnowIT. Technology - KnowIT incorporates open-source components that have been heavily modified by KnowledgeStorm.
Index growth - The expectation is that the KnowIT index will grow by several orders of magnitude over time, KnowledgeStorm's primary concern is with quality index growth to keep spam and unrelated content as close to zero as possible.
I can say that I'm excited about KnowIT and excited about where they're pushing IT vertical search. Thanks again for the call, guys! Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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Today's Hott Search Industry News: Google and Yahoo Legal Battles; the Butler, Ingenio Automated
Some of this news is piping hot. Some has lost its sizzle a little due to me not posting about it for a few days. So without further ado here's search's hottest news:
The Butler, Automated
You can buy Ask Jeeves listings without calling a rep now. I haven't seen any reviews of the program yet - anyone?
Also, speculations that Ask may off the butler. In the study. With a candle stick.
Ingenio launched a PPCall API that enables bidding by marketers. This will get some PPC adopters engaged, but how will they reach the small biz masses - without websites - advertising in phone books only? Watch for big partnerships coming here.
Google's current trademark rules overturned: "Geico had 'established a likelihood of confusion' resulting from the use of the trademarks." The ruling applies only to Geico's trademark, but other big brands will smell the blood in the water.
Battelle points to the new A9 map, featuring the store-front view. As a visual navigator I'm excited - my trip to my new doctor's office yesterday could have been a little quicker if I'd known what their building looked like, and some of the landmarks along the approach. Hope A9 hits Raleigh soon :)
Miva Pays for Infringing on Yahoo's Patent
8 million bucks. "Miva will also pay an undisclosed ongoing fee to Yahoo! for a non-exclusive license to certain Yahoo! patents."
China. It's blowing up like my cell on a Friday night. To avoid exposing my vast ignorance of Chinese economics, politics and history I'm giving you a few links to news stories.
Today's Sizzlin' Search Industry Rumors: Google, Yahoo and Rupert Murdoch
I'm organizing my posts a little differently today cause there's so many juicy rumors flying. Plus I want to get the news covered by noon so I can work on some other exciting projects :)
Free Wi-Fi Network from Google
Ok, so first on the list is the free Google Wi-Fi network. Woah! Free Wi-Frikkin-Fi for everyone? Here's the paragraph from Om Malik's post that's got everyone linking:
"So once the GoogleNet is built, how would consumers connect for free access? One of the cheapest ways would be for Google to blanket major cities with Wi-Fi, and evidence gathered by Business 2.0 suggests that the company may be trying to do just that."
The Doctor is In: "AOL, Ask Jeeves search growth outpaces leaders," or does it?
Dr. Vladimir Crk is WebSourced's Director of Six Sigma Quality Assurance and Marketing Statistical Analysis. In a previous life, Vladimir led the Design for Six Sigma and Reliability as well as the process development and improvement programs for a fortune 100 company.
Now he's in charge of Quality Control for our Internet Marketing programs as well as Statistical Marketing Analysis, of which he'll be delivering a weekly dose of here in Search Engine Lowdown.
In his coming statistical analysis of data from Nielsen//NetRatings, comScore, and data mined from our SEM Web Services marketing analytics platform, he'll deliver actionable interactive marketing insights for CXOs seeking leading edge marketing insights.
This week the Doctor cracks down on the recent news of AOL and Ask Jeeves outpacing Google and Yahoo in search growth. Is 16% growth impressive? The Doctor thinks not.
"AOL, Ask Jeeves search growth outpaces leaders," or does it?
On Friday, July 29, 2005, the Center for Media Research published the number of searches for the top 5 search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Ask Jeeves), the information based on the Nielsen/NetRating report for the Q1 and Q2 of 2005. Also, c/net news.com refers to the Reuters news with the same story. The news states that, comparing Q1 and Q2, the significant increase of the number of searches has been identified for AOL and Ask Jeeves (15% and 16%, respectively), while Google and Yahoo have maintained the single digit growth (6% and 9%, respectively). Based on the comparison of the number of searches for Q1 and Q2 for each engine individually the growth can be illustrated in the following figure (as published).
"Ken Cassar, director of strategic analysis, Nielsen//NetRatings, said "While it's far too early to say that Google needs to watch its back, a resurgent AOL makes the game a lot more interesting.""
The above percentages are calculated with respect to the previous quarter number of searches on the same search engine. So, let's see if the above statement could be a real basis for any concern for the major search engines, at least for now.
Looking at the overall number of searches for the top 5 engines for each quarter we will get a slightly different picture. The distribution of the number of searches for Q2, for example, can be illustrated in the following figure.
As shown above, about 47.4% of all the searches in Q2 have been done using Google and 21.8% of all the searches in Q2 has been done using Yahoo. The following figure compares the number of searches by each engine to the overall number of searches for given quarter.
It is apparent that, comparing Q1 and Q2, there is no significant change in the distribution of the overall number of searches by the search engines. For example, the percent of the total number of searches using Google has increased from 46.8% in Q1 to 47.4% in Q2, and the number of searches using Yahoo has increased from 21.0% in Q1 to 21.8% in Q2. At the same time, the Google – Yahoo ratio of the number of searches (2.2.: 1) has not changed from Q1 to Q2, which indicates that the overall number of searches has increased but the "popularity" of any of the search engine over the others has not changed significantly, at least for now. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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Google's Book Crawler Gets Disallow from Some Publishers
Google blog recently announced changes to the Google Print project in which they're scanning libraries and putting the data in their index.
Is this news? Well, maybe not so much to online marketers, unless you have print books you'd like scanned. (coming soon: optimizing your books for search engines ;) It is news in the larger story of Google's indexing of all data known to mankind.
So here's the goods:
Publishers can add books to the to-be-scanned list. Publishers can get revenue from contextual ads on their in-book result pages.
Publishers can opt out of having their books scanned. To give publishers time to opt-out Google's waiting until November to begin scanning books with a copyright.
Publishers are jumpy. I can understand - I prefer opt-in to opt-out myself.
Though Google's scanning books in their entirety, according to the Washington Post "Google's search service would only allow users to look up several sentences in copyrighted materials, not the entire book."
As a publisher I'd be a bit uncomfortable with Google scanning books entirely without permission. As a search geek I know that Google's more than likely to stay within fair use, but copying is copying, scanning is scanning so I can see the publishers' side on this too.
Anyone seen any good posts from the publishers' camp?
Two closing thoughts: any thoughts on how tough it would be to make a book scraper that could query Google's book index and get an entire book through thousands of queries? (My guess is that piecing all this together would be a biaaatch).
What do the scanning operations look like? Who's sitting there and scanning individual pages? The logistics of the operation intrigue me. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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Dutch Scientists: Search Engines Rewriting Past, Replacing it with Ultra-Present
WPN's Jason Miller has a snarky send up of recent Dutch research into the ultra-present of the Internet and how search engines "rewrite history by continually updating the present and erasing the past in the process. This condition creates an 'extended present,' that is, perceptually, never ending."
update: hrm... this paper's looking a little musty. Is this another artifact like the Ask Jeeves interview? Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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SEC/Google IPO Wrangling Revealed
The San Francisco Chronicle got ahold of the correspondence between Google and the SEC prior to their IPO (year anniversary this Friday according to Gary).
Is this news? No, just interesting from a behind the scenes perspective. So I pulled the cool/new stuff out of the article:
Google and the SEC had extensive discussions about the Playboy interview as well as their failure to document millions of shares given to employees.
Google agreed that "anything said by regulators in prelude to the IPO could not be used later as a defense in any trial."
"Google either disregarded the regulators' advice to include full names or offered them a satisfactory explanation. References to Larry, Sergey and Eric were sprinkled throughout the final document."
Despite "raised eyebrows" Google kept in wording about doing "things that matter" and delivering "a great service to the world."
"John Heine, a spokesman for the SEC, declined to say whether his staff paid more attention to Google's IPO filing than other companies because of its high profile. He would only say: 'In general, we review filings closely.'"
Search Profiles: Medical Metasearch Engine OmniMedicalSearch
I'm getting more and more excited about vertical search and the ability of an individual or small group of folks to really target an index - and their presentation of results - to a niche audience.
OmniMedicalSearch, a medical metasearch engine, is getting one part of vertical search done well - targeted results.
Consider OMS the DogPile of medical search engines: it draws medical results from more than 12 different medical search engines and news results from 10 different medical news sources.
The advantage to searchers is that OMS cuts out what creator Jason Morrow calls, "the snake-oil sites selling remedies and not providing reliable medical information."
Traffic to the site is growing. Jason said that:
In May, we averaged 2,027 page views/day. In June, 6,119/day In July, 12,322/day August so far, 7 day average, 22,000/day
OMS also has top 10 ranking in the big 3 search engines for the term "medical search engine."
Jason said their marketing's been grassroots thus far. Here's how they're currently generating searches:
Link suggestions to universities, medical associations, and doctor, health and medical websites.
100 webmasters put the OMS search box on their sites.
3000 toolbar downloads.
FireFox plug in.
Word of mouth through email.
Press.
So here's how I think OMS could push things a little further:
First there's the Web2 search tab, which allows users to search just
1. .edu domains via Yahoo 2. .gov domains via Google by Netscape 3. .ac.uk domains by MSN 4. .org domains by Teoma
While I think this is a useful idea especially for straight info searches, I don't think it belongs on a medical search engine... or perhaps these results should be folded into the main medical search so that all the relevant medical results appear in the main results.
I sent this critique to Jason before publishing and he commented that, "I included [Web2] in with OMS because sometimes the coverage of those 12 medical search engines is limited to just the major diseases, health issues and medical concerns. Think of the medical Web part as a camera with a narrow lense, it focuses in on broad topics and specific topics better, and the Web2 is a wide angle lense. It gives you more coverage area."
Secondly I think OMS could be doing more with how it displays results, per AOL's snapshot for heart attack, where AOL's editors decided what other bits of relevant information to link to.
I'm not one who searches regularly for medical information, but I wonder if there should be a differentiation between the more academic and general-knowledge information. In other words, is this vertical search engine actually too broad?
I think that the advantage of a vertical search engine is that when the creators really understand their niche they can package results to meet user needs rather than simply delivering them in a list of 10 results with text snippets.
Jason mentioned that their "Related Search" options is currently in the shop for some fine tuning.
Best of luck to you Jason, and thanks for the interview.
I enjoy covering the big threefour five of search, but I'm also interested in profiling other up and comers - I think that's where we'll find some wild answers to what the future of search holds. If you're interested in talking about your search engine project on SEL shoot me an email: SELowdown@gmail.com or call 919-433-3139. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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August 12, 2005
Murdoch Purchase Speculation + Other Big Buy Rumors Battelle quotes some speculation on who Murdoch's looking at:
Rumors are circulating it's Looksmart, the stock is up on them. Mamma.com has also been rumored, but had a bad quarterly report today and is stock is not up....
Alan Meckler says "I would guess InfoSpace could make sense, but also wonder if CNET (while not Search) would not be a good fit for News Corp?"
To stir up the pot a little SearchViews has word of a Mamma and InfoSpace distribution deal.
And finally there's the big time rumor of a "large search engine" buying Technorati. From BL:
Here's a tip I was given this morning from a venture capitalist who is "heavily invested" in the blogosphere: Technorati is about to be sold to a large search engine company.
BL thinks it's Yahoo who's going to make the buy. If there is a buy.
I say it's LookSmart fattening up for Murdoch ;) Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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August 11, 2005
Which Search Engine is Murdoch Buying? Paid Content learned today:
In response to a question about search, Murdoch said the company is in "advanced negotiations" to buy controlling interest in a search company but he also said about acquisitions "we'll be looking at additional assets at modest prices." He also said about acquisitions, "expect additional announcements as we work to achieve our goal."
