Microsoft Google AOL Stories I Read Today
Here's what I read this morning before heading over to help my sister move:
About the AOL announcement The recent announcement of the AOL partnership has been the source of a lot of rumors and misconceptions. We'd like to clear some of those up. link
Microsoft Seeks Deal to Rival Google-AOL Pact Microsoft is most certainly thinking of ways to jump back into the game after having lost out to Google in the AOL deal, and rumors are already emerging that something may already be in the works. link
AdCenter Pilot Yields High ROI, Calls for Expansion Ad campaigns are generating high conversion rates in MSN's pilot paid ad program, MSN AdCenter, but search marketers say they want Microsoft to expand the program faster. link
Google rules - but for how long? Says Garrett French, of the marketing company Websourced: "One thing Microsoft is not is disorganized." link
Google Revises Free Classifieds Over the weekend, Google apparently altered the home page of Google Base to a more simple, streamlined search page, with popular searches and categories displayed as well. With the changes, the page now more closely resembles other online classifieds sites, according to industry observers. link Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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December 21, 2005
Kozoru Answer Engine Blocked From Google API
Kozoru appeared on my radar at the beginning of December, when Battelle covered a blog post from John Flowers about the poor treatment he received from Google as he attempted to negotiate a sale of kozoru, his answer engine. "Everything we saw and heard and felt seemed like we were getting along great with everyone there. Everything, that is, until three weeks ago when - without warning - they stopped responding to e-mails or returning phone calls. They did, however, take the opportunity to log into our private interface and see what we were doing (after we shared it with them), even after the calls stopped and the radio silence continued."
From the appearance of things, Google blocked kozoru because it provides results in a more useful fashion: answers to natural-language questions. But who knows what's really going on behind the Google curtain...
update: Kozoru kindly wrote to correct my misspelling of its name. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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Mayer + Zawodny Yahoo Radio Show Debuts Tonight at 8pm EST Daron Babin, the man in charge of Webmaster Radio (the people who help us bring you our Daily Searchcast), has let us know that two very well-known members of the Yahoo Search team, Tim Mayer and Jeremy Zawodny will host a new webcast/podcast that will debut on Wednesday (December 21st) night at 8pm EST.
...the show will be full of commentary about the valley's newest and hottest companies, interviews with insiders, and much more.
Zawodny sez: I wanted to make a joke about it sounding more exciting that it really is, but we've never done this before. So it's kind of exciting. I have no idea what will come of it. :-) Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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Google Answers Madison Avenue Fears With Cooperative Gestures
In a MediaPost article today by Joe Mandese and Wendy Davis Madison Avenue execs voice mounting concerns about Google's growing media buying/planning presence:
"When Google takes on the print industry, which they are starting to do, it's going to be huge," Peter Gardiner, chief media officer of New York ad agency Deutsch fretted during a recent Advertising Women of New York panel discussion. "They're expanding that to every medium. When they become the search engine for everything the lines really cross over."
In the same article Chris LaSala, "the Google executive who is developing the new agency programs," attempts to assuage their fears:
"Our mission is around technology and scale. The goal is to do that to the benefit of anyone involved: agency, direct customer, big customer, and small customer. To say that we're competing, or that we're getting into that business would be unfair, primarily because what we are doing to support the agency as a customer is quite significant."
The article mentions three agency-focused initiatives Google started:
1) Agency Training (25 sessions this year) 2) System of agency development managers in regional offices "he described their job function as generating information, ideas and programs that will help the agencies and their clients grow their businesses via Google." 3) "The third element is less structured, but equally important. It involves working with Google's product development team to create new products that will help fulfill the goals of agencies and their clients."
Google + AOL: Done Deal IN A MOVE THAT DEEPENS the advertising partnership between Google and AOL, Time Warner Tuesday sold 5 percent of AOL to Google for $1 billion. mediapost
What's new: + Google Talk users and AIM users will be able to communicate with one another if, and the following is a direct quote, "if certain conditions are met."
+ Collaborating in video search and showcasing AOL's premium video service within Google Video
+ Creating an AOL Marketplace through white labeling of Google's advertising technology - enabling AOL to sell search advertising directly to advertisers on AOL-owned properties.
+ "Expanding display advertising throughout the Google network."
+ Making AOL content more accessible to Google Web crawlers.
+ Providing AOL marketing credits for its Internet properties.
New Language-Related Search Tools from Ask Jeeves Herald European Expansion
I got this ping from Ask late last night:
Ask Jeeves launched new language search tools today in our continued effort to make finding what you are looking for easier and faster on Ask.com:
-Page Translations -Dictionary Smart Answers -Synonyms -Audio Pronunciations for words
Interesting, from the blog post, "As we approach site launches in Europe next year, the index has taken on a more international flavor. Voila! We need a codebreaker for those who do not speak seven languages (like most of the folks on our international team)."
Check out their blog post for more on their new language tools: Word Up Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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December 20, 2005
Ask Jeeves to Increase Ranks by 20% in 2006 "Barry Diller's Internet empire expects to increase the staff at its Ask Jeeves search engine by about 20%, Ask Jeeves head Steve Berkowitz says."
How Google Collects and Ranks Results
Google just launched its newsletter for librarians. The first issue has an article from Matt Cutts entitled "How does Google collect and rank results?"
I've heard index building described 100 different ways. It's great to read it written of so plainly.
Be sure to check out his exercises for students. Sound like fun? Send to SEM prospects to help them understand how Google actually works :)
Update: read Matt's dream where he deletes the last of Oilman's spam from Google's index forever. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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Battelle Reviews his Predictions for 2005 Alright then. Here's my 2004 predictions post, written in late December, 2004. As much as I might wince at the one or two clunkers, I'd say I did pretty well on most. Here's running commentary on each - original in itals, my comments in bold:
Custom Yahoo Search Shortcuts + Zawodny Interview "Open Shortcuts (beta) are custom keywords that take you directly to a site, a search, or start a task right from the search box. In Unix speak: if the search box is the command-line of the web, shortcuts are aliases."
Danny Sullivan investigates and elucidates Y's customized search shortcuts. And links to his reviews of several other similar shortcut creating services.
And check out the Jeremy Zawodny Interview: "I really expected to get a “Dude, WTF?!” email message from Matt Cutts within a few days of starting my sponsored links experiment."
AOL Pushing for Graphic Ads on Google Properties "Users of Google's search engine will soon see something they are not used to on the notoriously spare site: advertising with logos and graphics. And the advertisers will not be limited to America Online, whose talks with Google prompted the change in policy, according to two executives close to the companies' negotiations."
Yahoo Moving to Google Account Structure Step One
As mentioned in a previous article on Search Engine Lowdown, Yahoo is going to change their account structure to mimic Google’s and MSN’s. Last week Yahoo announced that they are changing their “look,” http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?threadid=9211
This change includes shortening their listings to 70 characters. This happens to be the same number of characters for Google ads. Whether you agree with this new move to shorten ads or not, if you handle large complex sites in multiple engines, you will agree that it is much easier to manage these ads due to the ability to use the same ads in Yahoo, Google, and MSN. Al Scillitani
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December 19, 2005
MapQuest, Yahoo Maps + Google Maps Debated in Hilarious SNL Rap
The Lonely Island comics are darlings of Boing Boing who made it to SNL from the web (I presume making viral videos??).
Listen/watch as they parody hardcore rap, bad movies, and discuss which online map service to use for finding their movie theatre.
THK Letter of Intent for Litmus Media: Click Fraud Detection and Order Abandonment Recovery Technologies Dec 19 (Reuters) - CGI Holding Corp. (THK.A: Quote, Profile, Research), which does business as Think Partnership Inc., on Monday said it plans to acquire Litmus Media Inc. for $6.5 million in cash and $6.5 million in common stock.
Google + AOL Pundit Roundup
These are the highlights Gary Price pulled from the WSJ article on Google's "exclusive negotiations". They'll get you up to speed if you're not already.
+ AOL and Google are now in "exclusive negotiations." Microsoft has been "shut out" of the negotiations at this point.
+ Google will pay $1 billion for a 5% stake in AOL.
+ "AOL would be able to sell advertising among the search results provided by Google on AOL Web properties." At the moment, sponsored links come from Google...AOL's sales staff would also sell display ads across Google's network of Web publishers."
+ "Google will promote AOL's Web properties among the sponsored links in its search results, and will include AOL's collection of online videos among its search results. Google's arrangement to provide search technology for AOL, which was set to expire at the end of next year, would be extended for five years."
+ Don't look for a deal and/or an announcement until next week after a Time-Warner board meeting.
And here's what folks are saying:
Battelle: If AOL goes public and is seen by by Wall Street and others as the equivalent of a cheap ticket to Google revenue, it may well pop into Yahoo like valuations - to $50 or 60 billion in market cap or more.
Battelle quoting NYTimes quoting Battelle: "This is Google's first test as a chess player in a major corporate battle," said John Battelle...."They are saying, 'We will take some of our pawns and block the move to our queen by Microsoft,' " he said. "Until now, Google has said, 'We don't think about our competitors. We spend all our time building better products for our users.' "
Charlene Li: It appears the MSFT/AOL deal fell apart because they were TOO similar and had too many conflicts that couldn't be worked out. ...the deal made a great deal of sense on paper but any cooperation on the content front would have been a nightmare.
Greg Sterling: ...perhaps Google is, with this deal, showing the potential to undermine the user experience that got the company to where it is today: fast, clean and relevant (no paid inclusion) search results.
Gary Stein, highlighting this crucial NYTimes nugget: Google, which prides itself on the purity of its search results, agreed to give favored placement to content from AOL throughout its site, something it has never done before.
This week, Google introduced two new Firefox extensions: Google Safe Browsing and Blogger Web Comments which are providing richer integration with the desktop and a number of new features based on your surfing patterns.
By using the Extensions, you acknowledge and agree that Google may access, preserve, and disclose information regarding your use of the services if required to do so by law or under other conditions set forth in the Google Privacy Policy
Google and AOL in Exclusive Negotiations Although Microsoft has been courting AOL for some time now in an attempt to catch the Google juggernaut, an article hot off the presses from the WSJ reveals that Google and AOL are now in exclusive negotiations. There has already been some discussion going at Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Watch, but Microsoft certainly has to be concerned about being asked to leave the table. Scott Woodard
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Paid Text Links and the Bigger Picture
After Matt Cutt’s post Tell Me About Your Backlinks on December 9th and the ensuing post Text Link Followup on Tuesday, there has been widespread discussion about the practice of purchasing text links and quite a bit of controversy. While Google’s stance is that the practice of buying text links is an attempt to manipulate search engine results, Yahoo’s Jeremy Zawodny’s site is actively selling them. Oh the drama.
While I understand Google’s desire to improve the quality of their search results, links are nothing but another form of advertising and any SEO value that a text link may carry is only due to Google’s reliance on anchor text in determining relevancy. If Site A has built a strong user base and a significant number of inbound links to their site, why shouldn’t Site A be allowed to profit by selling links to Site B? I see this as simple capitalism evolving on the web. While there are some unscrupulous sites selling links to very low quality scraper sites, how are these any different than ordinary bad sites that link to bad sites? A high quality site selling a link to another high quality site is not devious, it’s just advertising.
I completely agree that those folks who are purchasing text links with the sole purpose of ranking low quality sites and gaming the search engines should be penalized. At the same time, there are many high-quality sites that purchase text links on relevant sites primarily for click-through value. Any SEO value is just icing on the cake and may disappear at any moment. I don't believe that sites that engage in legitimate advertising should be viewed as "losing trust" in the eyes of the search engines as Matt said.
Matt’s response to advertisers and link sellers was that text links should be designated with the “rel=nofollow” attribute and that links should be bought for potential click-through value instead of SEO value. I completely agree that links should be bought on the basis of potential click-throughs, but the "rel=nofollow" suggestion is a little more loaded.
What bothers me about Google’s stance is that they are putting the onus on site owners to improve their search results rather than adjusting their algorithm.
I know several site owners who purchase links from local newspapers and very targeted sites because they have a regionally defined audience. Most of these small sites they purchase links from have never heard of SEO and I doubt that they will be willing to add "rel=nofollow" tags to their ads. Ultimately legitimate sites that choose to advertise in this way should not have to adjust their marketing strategies to please the search engines. Scott Woodard
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MIT Search Forum Podcast with Google, Yahoo, MSN, Safa Our panel of experts will lay out the playing field, define what lies ahead and discuss what distinguishes their direction in defining the benefits for what will evolve for Users of Search and the internet at large.
Moderator Safa Rashtchy, Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst, Piper Jaffray
Panelists Urs Hoelzle, Google Fellow, VP of Operations Gary Flake, Microsoft, MSN Technical Fellow Eckart Walther, Yahoo!, VP of Yahoo! Search Products Oren Etzioni, UW Professor, Madrona Venture Group
From Chris Sherman's Gmail post: "Gmail mobile allows you to get your mail from just about any mobile phone browser, and most of the key features of Gmail are availble in the smaller format as well."
I'm not a cell phone text messager, but for those of you who are, would you rather send emails with your phone than text messages?
All the Matt Cutts SEO Interviews in One Post
From Matt's blog: If you’re a Mattaholic, there are several places to get your fix. Here are a few in reverse chronological order:
Yahoo!: Index Update, New SERPS Look Coming Yahoo updated its index Wednesday night. Here's one person's analysis from comments to Tim's post: "Keyword in domain and URL, almost regardless of content and quality, no longer rules the roost." What have you noticed?
"According to the letter, research has shown that making results pages easier for users to read will generally provide an increase in clicks, while maintaining conversion rates."
I've seen the email. Watch for big changes on January the 18th.
OSLO, Dec 15 (Reuters) - Norwegian internet browser maker Opera (OPERA.OL: Quote, Profile, Research) has not been approached by Google (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) or any other firms as a possible takeover target, Christian Jebsen, the company's Chief Financial Officer, said on Thursday. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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December 15, 2005
Ingenio Adds Auto-Bidding and Conversion Management Ingenio sent me an email. They've added auto-bidding and conversion management:
Auto-bidding: similar to the proxy bidding features popularized by Google and eBay, Ingenio Auto-Bidding allows advertisers to set a "max" price per call and will automatically update an advertiser's bid by $.01 until it reaches the max price point. This feature had been a top request from Ingenio advertisers.
Ingenio Conversion Management: this process does two things (1) optimizes the relevancy of Ingenio ads to help distribution partners maximize revenue from Pay Per Call listings (2) helps advertisers fine-tune their Pay Per Call campaigns to produce better quality leads.
"WEB USERS CONDUCTED MORE THAN 5.1 billion search queries in October--marking a 15 percent increase from June, according to a Nielsen//NetRatings report released Tuesday."
And the October break down: Google -- 48% of all searches Yahoo! -- 21.8% of all searches MSN ----- 11.3% of all searches AOL ------ 7.2% of all searches Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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Battelle at eBay: Alexa, Base and Skype Battelle visited eBay recently, read from his book and had some conversations.
On Base: "After I ran through some passages of the book and told a few stories, we got to a pretty robust Q&A (one attendee, Alan Lewis, wrote it up here). A lot of questions about Google, not surprisingly, given the Base announcement."
On Alexa: "And Amazon, well, Alexa's news was very keenly watched in the halls of eBay yesterday." (Here's Alexa's news.)
On Skype: "Where the real experimentation is happening on eBay is with its developers, who are building all sorts of interesting companies on top of eBay's web services APIs and platform. But the company itself is not well known for creating interesting new web widgets. With the purchase of Skype, however, and the need to grow beyond its core offerings, I sensed from my conversation there that this may change, and soon."
Get fresh eBay. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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Google Blogoscoped: Larry Page in 2038, Gmail Additions, Music, Homepage API
In order of newness on Lenssen's blog:
Parsing the Link Selling Debate
If you follow search news you can't have escaped the debate that's developed around Jeremy Zawodney's decision to sell links on his blog.
The debate revolves around Jeremy's decision to post paid links without a nofollow tag.
Leaving the nofollow tag off means that these paid linkers get "link value" or "vote value" or "link juice" without having done anything search engines would typically deem "link worthy."
My stance?
Jeremy earned his link juice by getting into a position (at Yahoo, in the world at large) where his opinion would make his blog something of an authority site. I feel he should not be penalized for selling this reputation that he has earned for himself.
Also he wrote his ass off and created tons of free content for many indices.
At the other side of the debate is the opinion that links, if they are to be used as a measure for relevance in a search algorithm, must not be sold. And if they are sold they should have the nofollow tag so that SEs will know not to consider the landing page as related or relevant.
It should also be noted that the debate's so hot because it comes down, to some extent, to Yahoo (Jeremy Zawodney) vs Google (Matt Cutts).
And that's my executive summary + personal slant version of the debate. (Thanks to Scott Woodard for discussion!!)
If you really want to dig into it here are all related posts (that I've found).
Greg Sterling's Top Searches Roundup
Kelsey Group's Greg Sterling did the heavy lifting. I did the heavy linking. Here's the lion's share links from Greg's top searches of 2005 post.
SEL Nominated for "Major Award!!"
Some kind soul nominated Search Engine Lowdown for Loren Baker's "Best Search Engine News Blogs" section. (Vote for Search Engine Lowdown.)
There's some pretty stiff competition for that category: Pandia (pandia.com) MarketingPilgrim (marketingpilgrim.com) SearchEngineBlog.com Search Engine Lowdown (searchenginelowdown.com) Search Views (searchviews.com) John Battelle Search Blog (battellemedia.com) Search Engine Watch Blog (blog.searchenginewatch.com) Threadwatch (threadwatch.org) Google Blogoscoped (blog.outer-court.com) Search Engine Roundtable (seroundtable.com) Research Buzz (researchbuzz.com) Top Rank Blog (toprank.blogspot.com)
...pretty much all the folks I link to from my posts :)
Luckily I've had some help in the past few months from WebSourced writers like Al Scillitani, Jenny Halasz and Robert McRackan as well as industry hawks like Chris Sessoms and Ken Chen.
Thank you guys for helping expand and grow SEL coverage, and to make it a valuable resource for the industry as well as ourselves.
2005 Online Holiday Shopping Up 33% Over 2004 Consumers are increasingly going online this holiday season. Data from Nielsen//NetRatings's Holiday eShopping Index shows a 33 percent increase over last year.
Weekly shopping sessions at online retailers rose from 348.3 million over the holidays last year to 462.5 million in 2005. The increase is a 33 percent jump over the 2004 holiday season.
Yahoo Small Business Platform Adds Blogs
Yahoo's pulling the pieces together for small businesses and making it simpler and simpler to get online. There may come a time when a Yellow Page listing will come with a home page and blog too :)
From the Reuter's Movable Type article: "Yahoo provides customers with a unique Web address, blogging tools and business-class e-mail services with spam and virus protections for less than $12 a month."
What a smart way to create customers for Yahoo Search Marketing and create more content for their search ad network.
Alexa API for Search Marketers
I was looking around for more thoughts on the Alexa API and found this over at Michael Nguyen's search marketing blog:
"Well for one, you could build a tool analyzing every single page that links to your site - including anchor text, subject, the sites that link to those pages, alexa traffic of those sites, etc, etc - for a very small cost to process. Personalized link network analysis of client sites would be a great service. Right now our current tools are based on what Google and Yahoo return back through their APIs. The information we get back through the APIs may not be exactly the information Google and Yahoo use to calculate rankings. With access to your own full blown search engine, we have access to the same information the big search engines do."
"With this service you can not only see who is linking to you, but who is linking to those sites - a real link network. You can filter out by criteria important to you. Let’s say you only need data on search engine marketing sites, you can filter for that. Or maybe you need search engine marketing sites with a certain level of traffic and amount of incoming links, you can filter for that. This is a powerful tool."
Alexa to Offer Index, Storage and Processing Power API
John Battelle got the scoop on the Alexa API story, and it's a BIG ONE for the search industry... I think the effect will be similar to the one that blogs had on main stream media. At the very least it lowers the barrier of entry on creating a solid search mashup based on an index of 5 billion pages. (Gigablast offers its index too, though not with such flexibility for development.)
Here's Alexa Web Search Platform beta (think tinker toys or legos for developers who want to make their own search engine-based business or service)
Here, in Battelle's words, is what's happening:
"In short, Alexa, an Amazon-owned search company started by Bruce Gilliat and Brewster Kahle (and the spider that fuels the Internet Archive), is going to offer its index up to anyone who wants it (details are not up yet, but soon). Alexa has about 5 billion documents in its index - about 100 terabytes of data."
"Anyone can also use Alexa's servers and processing power to mine its index to discover things - perhaps, to outsource the crawl needed to create a vertical search engine, for example. Or maybe to build new kinds of search engines entirely, or ...well, whatever creative folks can dream up. And then, anyone can run that new service on Alexa's (er...Amazon's) platform, should they wish."
"The fees? One dollar per CPU hour consumed. $1 per gig of storage used. $1 per 50 gigs of data processed. $1 per gig of data uploaded (if you are putting your new service up on their platform)."
"In other words, Alexa and Amazon are turning the index inside out, and offering it as a web service that anyone can mashup to their hearts content. Entrepreneurs can use Alexa's crawl, Alexa's processors, Alexa's server farm....the whole nine yards."
Can I get a "HOLY CRAP!!!" from y'all?
Battelle's excited, but asks "Will this be like A9, a groundbreaking development that fails to get traction with a wider audience? Or might this just start something?"
To balance my exuberance I'm going to pull some of Sullivan's quotes:
"But spending money to lease search services? That's a remnant from the days before search ads, when search engines wanted to be paid for storage and processor time. Search ads made the leasing services model go away."
"It also has to be said that the Alexa pitch would be a heck of a lot stronger if Alexa itself actually used its own web index. But it doesn't. Want to search the web with Alexa? Alexa depends on Google to give it a reach well beyond the 4 billion pages that Alexa has gathered."
"Like John, I've not really talked with a ton of developers, and perhaps that might shape my view to be more positive. At the moment, I definitely don't see it as a hugely groundbreaking move that will reshape web search forever, any more than Amazon's A9 Open Search has yet to do. If you want that groundbreaking move, you have to go back to when the Google API was first offered years ago. This is just an extension of that."
This acquisition hammered something home for me: Yahoo's belief in the value of community. Del.icio.us fits so well with Flikr, and could even inform their developments in local and Yahoo Answers. Watch for some real advances in social searching from Yahoo in '06. I'm really excited to see what they do, and it appears that they have a thriving culture of innovation (check out Yahoo's First Hack Day: What a Blast!).
So now here's a roundup of all the Del.icio.us acquisition coverage:
But is it del.ove.ly? (money CNN) Yahoo (Research) is snatching up Del.icio.us to add to its arsenal of "social media" properties, including photo-sharing Web site Flickr, My Web 2.0 (an experiment with improving search results by letting people essentially program their own search engine through tagging and sharing searches with friends), and the just-launched Yahoo Answers (where you can ask any question, and another Yahoo visitor will answer it).
Another Update: Yahoo Acquires Del.icio.us (battelle) Second Update: OK, now I have *more* sources that say yes, the deal is similar to Flickr, but *that* deal was not really at 30-35 million, it was more like $17-19 million.
And - this is simply amazing to me - del.icio.us has 300,000 users. Holy sh*t.
The Seattle connection to del.icio.us (seattle pi) Seattle-based Amazon.com -- along with Union Square Capital, BV Capital and others -- was an early investor in del.icio.us.
Thanks to Chris Stynes, WebSourced Director of Corporate Sales, for Yahoo/del.icio.us/future-of-web conversation. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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Mike Grehan Unpacks SEO Jargon There's something wrong with much of the language we use in the SEO (define) industry. Take the ubiquitous industry misnomer itself: "search engine optimization." Who in this industry has ever optimized a search engine, other than a search engine? And there's "SEM" (define). Who has ever marketed a search engine, other than a search engine?
In SEO baloney, from Mike's blog, he offers a couple of slides from a recent presentation and talks about his inspiration for the article.
(thanks to WebSourcer Vickie Nash for heads up on Mike's article) Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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Online Ad Spend to Double in Five Years
Via ClickZ: "By 2010, spending on Internet advertising will account for 10 percent of total U.S. ad dollars, according to "The Changing Face of Advertising in the Digital Age" from Parks Associates."
ZenithOptimedia has promising advertising numbers: ZenithOptimedia estimates that advertising spending this year will grow 4.8% (close to the firm's 5.0% prediction of a year ago). And, looking forward, the firm projects that 2006 will be even healthier with a 5.9% growth rate, with 2007 and 2008 roughly the same at 5.7% and 6% growth respectively.
Yahoo Answers Will Kick Google Answers in the Seat of the Pants
What's Yahoo Answers? Glad you asked.
Gary Price interviewed Ofer Shaked, Director of Engineering for Yahoo search and got this description from him: "Yahoo Answers is built on the company's social search technology with a focus on answering day to day questions of a subjunctive [sic?] nature (Where can I buy..., What's a good show to see..., etc.) and organizing them into a more structured info base with the use of several features including categories."
Here's why Yahoo Answers is going to kick Google Answers' butt:
1) Yahoo's got a network of users, who identify as Yahoo users. The portal-ness of Yahoo gives Yahoo users a sense that they are a part of a community. Yahoo Answers will reemphasize this community sense.
2) Yahoo has a willingness to integrate and encourage user generated content in their results: Yahoo Local. This willingness to incorporate ugc shows me that Yahoo's really looking for ways to tap into the group intelligence (ala Wikipedia).
2.5) "At launch, Yahoo Answers will be promoted on Yahoo Web Results pages." (via gp)
3) "New answers to questions can be delivered via RSS." (via gp)
4) Yahoo Answers is free. This may prove to be a mixed blessing. I think Yahoo should create some kind of answer currency to reward folks with the info.
These are my gut responses - I haven't been following the "Answers" sector and I'd welcome your flames reasoned, educational and link-heavy rebuttals.
CORRECTION: Former ThomasB2B Execs Launch Supplier Directory SourceTool.com "The site, which is supported with contextual ads, has been in a testing phase since early fall. It currently contains 12.5 million unique business terms, representing products and services from approximately 500,000 companies. Businesses aren't charged a fee to be listed."
"TradeComet is promoting SourceTool to users with an extensive CPC campaign on major search engines."
In a bit of circular irony, SourceTool runs AdSense ads.
CORRECTION: It was actually "Former executives from business-to-business search directory ThomasB2B.com," not ThomasB2B itself that started SourceTool. My apologies. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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December 07, 2005
SES Chicago 2005 Coverage Directory
I know there's more out there. As I find it I'll add it. If you know of some/wrote some you'd like to have included here send it to selowdown@gmail.com.
Google Calendar's a No Show at When 2.0 Conference
According to Michael Bazeley there were rumors that Google would unveil the Google Calendar at the When 2.0 conference.
They didn't.
"In fact, a Google rep got up to ask one of the panels a question and specifically said he was not there to make product announcements."
Dan Farber, of ZDNet, attended the conference. He said,
"I ran into Carl Sjogreen, who has something to do with Google's rumored calendar mate for Gmail, Gtalk, etc. Sjogreen, a former BEA product manager, was not particularly forthcoming about his role at Google..."
"Prior to my queries he was talking to Hans Bjordahl, the Microsoft program manager for Outlook's calendar, having a friendly contest to see who could extract more information from one another."
MSN, AOL, Google: the Battle Rages On
Greg Sterling interviewed Jim Riesenbach, SVP of AOL’s Search & Directional Media group at the Kelsey Group's recent Interactive Local Media 2005 Conference.
When Greg asked directly about "what would be the outcome of the much covered negotiations for a stake in AOL," Riesenbach sidestepped with "a thoughtful answer about how AOL would not be sought after unless its new strategy were paying dividends."
And here's the latest comScore numbers on unique visitors for October 2005, showing that, for October at least, and according to comScore, if MSN gets AOL's traffic they'll have more uniques than both Google and Yahoo:
The partnership is a crucial play for MSN, pretty much a make-or-break on their growth in search. For '06 at least. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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Hitwise: Search Engines Drive 18% of Visits to Shopping and Classified Category
According to new data from Hitwise, search engines and directories delivered 17.9% of visits to the shopping and classifieds category for the week ending December 3rd.
By search engine it looked like this: Google: 10.8% Yahoo: 4.1% MSN: .8%
Looking at these numbers made me think of the AOL + MSN parnership rumors... and how many percentage points there for Google came from AOL.
Think Partnership Announces Additions and Changes to Board of Directors and Senior Management Team
"CGI Holding Corporation, which plans to seek shareholder approval to change its name to Think Partnership Inc. (AMEX:THK) (the "Company"), today announced that Frederick P. Lyte has joined the Company's Board of Directors, current Director Xavier Hermosillo has joined the Executive Management team as Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications and Investor Relations of the Company, and Steven "Pat" Martin is leaving his position as President and CEO of the Company's WebSourced subsidiary."
You're press/blogging and wanna know more? Talk to the X: Xavier Hermosillo, 310-832-2999 Xavier@thinkpartnership.com Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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December 06, 2005
Think Partnership Signs Letter of Intent to Acquire iLead Media
CGI Holding Corporation d/b/a Think Partnership Inc. ("THK") (AMEX:THK - News; the Company) today anno
