The Search Engine Report - Number 110

ByDanny Sullivan, Editor
January 4, 2006
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In This Issue
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+SES NY Coming!
+Top Stories
+More From The Search Engine Watch Blog
+Daily SearchCast: Search News Via Podcast
+Our Search Newsletters & Feeds
+About The Newsletter
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Missed our SES Chicago show? Don‘t worry. Search Engine Strategies New York is coming up fast, happening Feb. 27 through March 2. Many of the popular sessions from SES Chicago will be returning, and you can get a rundown on some of these at theSES NY 2006 web site.
As always, there will be plenty of entirely new sessions happening. In particular for New York, expect sessions that look at branding issues, as well as how search and traditional marketing can blend together and help each other.
The complete SES NY agenda will be up after the New Year. You can sign-up on the SES NY 2006 site to be notified of this or just keep an eye on theSES Blog.
Following SES NY, March sees SES coming to Germany and China, then April sees visits to Japan, Canada and Italy. At the end of May, SES London happens and July sees our first ever SES Latino show coming to Miami. For more about these and other shows later in 2006, see theSearch Engine Strategies site.
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Below is a recap of major articles from ourdaily SearchDay newsletter and importantSearch Engine Watch Blog postings since the last newsletter. Want to receive these stories daily or via RSS/feed? See theSearch Engine Watch Newsletters & Web Feeds page for sign-up instructions.
=== Jan. 4, 2006 ===
Is Pay-Per-View Video Coming Soon to Google Video? - Pay per view video may soon be a part of Google Video. Is this a surprise? No, not at all. It‘s long been expected but may finally be arriving. See also:
Google Cubes PCs Or Interfaces Coming?No Google Cubes Coming, Says GoogleYahoo Begins Offering Online Access to Four Episodes of CBS SitcomsBlinkx.tv Ends a Busy Year with a New Feature and Some New ContentGates Keynoting CES - And So Are Semel & PageBill Gates Keynote Address at Consumer Electronic Show Will be Webcast Tonight; CES Podcasts via Yahoo
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Craigslist Not Blocking Major Crawlers - Contrary to reports, Craigslist has not embarked upon a new policy of blocking search engine spiders, but talking with Craigslist along with some further poking at the situation shows that‘s not the case. For Search Engine Watchmembers, there‘s alonger version of this article that goes into more depth of explaining what‘s in the current robots.txt file, how it has changed plus how while Craigslist does prohibit crawling by classified ad search engines through its terms of use, it still allows general purpose search engines such as Google and Yahoo to crawl freely.
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SEM Campaign & Project Management, Part 1 - What‘s the best approach to managing a search marketing campaign? A panel of experts shared best practices gained through years of experience with a wide range of clients. Alonger version of this story for Search Engine Watchmembers offers specific tips and strategies for more effectively managing a search marketing campaign, including keyword development, budgeting, web measurement and analytics and more.
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Being A Big Voice In SEO - How do you get to be a big voice in SEO? There‘s a series of posts out there now offering such advice, which I‘ll recap below, along with some thoughts on generations in SEO.
=== Jan. 3, 2006 ===
Tracking Changes on Web Pages - Often a small change to a web page is a clue that something big has happened or will happen, and automated tracking tools alert you the moment something has changed.
=== Dec. 29, 2005 ===
2005 in Review: The Top Search Industry Stories of the Year - Search caught fire last year, with new tools, services and virtually constant activity. Here‘s a look back at some of the most memorable themes and trends of the year.
=== Dec. 28, 2005 ===
Revisiting The "No Banners On Google" Declaration - Google promised that the terms of its deal with AOL wouldn‘t see a flood of banner ads flowing onto its pages nor the selling out of Google‘s principles. But I still felt there was some "wiggle room" in that "no banners" isn‘t the same as "no graphical ads." Now I‘ve had a chance to talk with Google. Yes, banners are pretty much out. However, other graphical units might still happen. See also:
More On AOL Pushing Google Into Graphic Ads & AOL PromotionGoogle Says Don‘t Worry, AOL Won‘t Change Us - But There‘s Wiggle RoomGoogle Not Testing Ads On Google Belarus -- They Don‘t Even Have A Google Belarus!
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Google Base Switches To Force All Searchers Through Jump Pages - When Google Base first launched, one of my key questions was whether people could click on a entry and go directly to the submitter‘s web site. Yes, you could. Now, you can‘t. Instead, you‘re forced to go through a "jump" or intermediary page before proceeding, an "experiment" I hope goes away.
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Google Book Search "Hack" Just Normal Operation - Steve Rubel thinks he‘s "hacked" Google Book Search, as he covers in his "Read Most of O‘Reilly‘s Hacks Books for Free Using Google" post. In reality, I think he‘s just finding that Google Book Search operates exactly the way it is supposed to operate, to show you a percentage of a book that a publisher itself has allowed you to view online.
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Patents, Google and Acquisitions & What About Search Patents from Other Companies? - Bill Slawski has done an impressive job of listing some of the patents held or applied for by companies Google has acquired over the years like Urchin, Applied Semantics, and Kaltix. But how about what other players are doing in developing in the patent world. A rundown on some non-Google search patents. See also:
Google Awarded Patent To Make Data Move Faster to Wireless Phones and DevicesGoogle Faces Patent Infringement Lawsuit Over Google TalkGoogle Patent May Shed Light On Google Suggest & Speeding Up Search ResultsNew Microsoft Patent Apps Discusses the Building of Personalized Portals
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2005 in Review: The Best Search Engine Watch Forum Posts - During the past year, the Search Engine Watch forums have grown into a lively community, with thousands of members discussing just about everything related to search.
=== Dec. 27, 2005 ===
2005 in Review: The Year‘s Top Search Terms - More proof that search engines are not all alike: The most popular search terms of the year varied quite a bit from engine to engine.
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Sharing The Search Wealth At A9, MSN & The Drawbacks - In my post-Christmas mailbox was a message from A9 reminding me of itsA9 Instant Rewards program that effectively pays me a bit to search with them. That was a perfect hook to revisit the entire "pay to search" idea that Microsoft chairman Bill Gates kicked off earlier this month.
=== Dec. 23, 2005 ===
Google‘s AOL Stake Rolling Into Holding Company It Can Take Public In 2008 - Google has now filed an 8-K form on the AOL deal that sheds light on some new details, include rolling its AOL stake into a new company that it can take public in 2008.
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Search Engine Forums Spotlight - Links to the week‘s topics from search engine forums across the web: Wish List for Yahoo! Pay Per Click Marketing - Google Groans Under the Massive Data Load - Matt Cutts Explains How Google Crawls and Ranks Pages - Content is NOT king! and more.
=== Dec. 22, 2005 ===
Your Own Personal Google Zeitgeist -Setting trends on the Official Google Blog covers a great holiday gift, a way to see your own top searches on Google. Very, very cool. You needGoogle Personalized Search active. Got it? Good, now go to yourtrends page. There you‘ll see the top 10 searches you‘ve done, the top 10 sites you‘ve visited and the top 10 things you‘ve most clicked on....[MORE]
=== Dec. 21, 2005 ===
A Compilation How-To Search Book Reviews - Want to be a professional searcher, or at least have the skills of a pro? These books show you how.
=== Dec. 20, 2005 ===
Google/AOL Deal is a Go: AIM and Google Talk To Become Interoperable, White Labelling of Google Ad Technology, and Expansion of Display Ads on Google Network All Part of "What‘s New" - It‘s final. Google and AOL are partnering up, with Google buying a 5 percent stake in AOL. Google Talk and AIM might become compatable, AOL will sell its own ads on AOL search powered by Google‘s ad technology, AOL will be able to sell display ads on Google content network sites, Google web search will NOT get display ads but image and video search might and more. See also:
Google and Microsoft Play "The Price is Right" with AOLSorry Bill and Steve, WSJ Reports Google Near $1 Billion Deal With AOLTime Warner Investor Works to "Derail" Rumored Google/AOL DealGoogle‘s AOL Stake Rolling Into Holding Company It Can Take Public In 2008
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Google AdSense For Domains Program Overdue For Reform -- And Yahoo & Microsoft Should Also Take Note - Google‘s long-standing DomainPark program (AKA AdSense For Domains), where Google puts ads on domains with lots of traffic but no content, comes under new criticism for funding typo domains that probably don‘t serve either searchers or advertisers well. It and Yahoo need to consider changes, as this article covers.This version for Search Engine Watchmembers goes into further depth.
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With One Link, Google Book Search Becomes Google‘s 5th Most Popular Service -Google Print Is Google‘s Ninth Most Popular Service here on the blog last month covered how according to Hitwise, Google Print -- since renamedGoogle Book Search -- made the top ten of most used Google services, though usage was only by a tiny 0.4 percent of Google visitors. Since then, a small change by Google has dramatically increased the visits to Google Book search and pushed it into being the fifth most popular service it offers.
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Yahoo Launches Open Shortcuts, Allows Creation Of Custom Search Commands - The new Yahoo Open Shortcuts service lets anyone create their own custom search commands for use on Yahoo. Want to navigate to a particular site quickly or have Yahoo remember a particular search string? The new service lets you do this.
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A Pair of Web Pathfinding Gems - Though we rely heavily on search engines these days, sometimes a good ‘old fashioned‘ human edited directory is a better choice for helping us locate high quality information on the web.
=== Dec. 19, 2005 ===
A Gangbuster Year for News Aggregator Topix.net - Topix.net has solidified its reputation as a key player in news search and aggregation over the past year, with major developments in both its business and services.
=== Dec. 16, 2005 ===
Search Engines Forum Spotlight - Links to the week‘s topics from search engine forums across the web: Yahoo Acquires Del.icio.us - Beware the Reciprocal Link Short Sellers - Ask Jeeves Growing Like Wild Fire! - Alexa Opens Up Crawler To The Public - Google Myths Busted! and more.
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Company Or Product Names Changed To Be Search Friendly? - Idea time -- can you think of companies, products or brands that have changed names to be more findable in search engines? Come post in our forum thread on this topic.
=== Dec. 15, 2005 ===
New Year Will Bring New Look to Yahoo Search Results Pages; Shorter Descriptions for Sponsored Listings - Paid listings on Yahoo search are about to get shorter in the new year, as they reduce to a 70 character display.
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Google Adds Music Search Feature - Google has introduced a new feature that provides information about music and musical artists in response to music related search queries. See alsoMusic Searching on the Web.
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HarperCollins To Digitize Own Books; Unclear How That Will Feed Into Book Search Engines -HarperCollins To Digitize And Control Its Book Content from the Wall Street Journal looks at HarperCollins saying it will digitize its active backlist of 20,000 titles and up 3,500 books per year. Part of the idea is that by doing this itself, the publisher can give content to the search engines to index but keep the files themselves. That leads me to think HarperCollins doesn‘t understand how book indexing works.
=== Dec. 14, 2005 ===
Information Wants to be Found - A modern paradox: As information becomes more abundant and easier to access, it‘s often more difficult to find what we‘re really looking for. That needn‘t be the case, writes respected information architecture guru Peter Morville in a new book.
=== Dec. 13, 2005 ===
Google Ads On TV Through Public Television Program Underwriting - Google is currently sponsoring/underwriting the popular public TV program NOVA that airs on PBS. A 15 second Google video "spot" is seen before each program.
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ABC News Named Top News Site of 2005 - Newsknife, an organization that monitors online news sites for quality and other metrics, has released its annual ranking of sites, with ABC News moving into first place.
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Yahoo‘s Jeremy Zawodny Caught In Link Selling Debate - Yahoo blogvangelist Jeremy Zawodny is in the ironic situation of selling links on his personal blog without using nofollow attributes while the most direct counterpart he has at Google, Matt Cutts, has been urging for months that nofollow should be used on paid links. A look at the debate.
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Alexa Offers Fee-Based Vertical Search Services - Alexa has announced a new Alexa Web Search Platform that‘s available to anyone willing to pay a fee. Pay a fee for what? You can create your own search engine by tapping into the 4 billion web pages Alexa has indexed over time. You can search against the entire index or just a selected set, in case you want to make your own vertical search engine.
=== Dec. 12, 2005 ===
ZoomInfo Enhances People Search - ZoomInfo, the Boston-based ‘people search‘ company has added several new features that help you search more than 27 million personal profiles.
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Havoc With Google Accounts - For the past week, I was surprised to discover that despite having an active Google Analytics account, I kept getting a message when logging in that new accounts weren‘t being offered. I didn‘t need a new account. I needed access to my existing one, which appeared to have gone away along with my data. After further investigation today, it‘s a symptom of a bigger problem, that of the Google Accounts system overall being in a mess.
=== Dec. 11, 2005 ===
New Stuff from Google AdWords: Troubleshooting Wizards, Landing Pages & Your Quality Score, and Larger Font Sizes For AdWords - Three items on the Google AdWords beat to report on: a new troubleshooting wizard for advertisers with missing ads, landing pages factored into ranking scores and AdWords headlines going up a font size.
=== Dec. 9, 2005 ===
Tag It: Acquisition, Yahoo Acquires del.icio.us - Even developing their own MyWeb 2.0 (tag, save, share service) and the Yahoo360set of services, Yahoo still wants more assets in the community building, tagging, and folksonomy arena. Accordingly, del.icio.us has now been acquired by Yahoo.
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Search Engines Forum Spotlight - Links to the week‘s topics from search engine forums across the web: SES Chicago 2005: ‘Triple Play Blog Coverage‘ - Yahoo Answers - Search Gaining On Email As Top Internet Activity - AOL to Drop Google and Sign with MSN, and more.
=== Dec. 8, 2005 ===
Windows Live Local Beta is Now Online; Some Global Imagery Also Added - The newWindows Live Local service offers new "bird‘s eye" imagery showing close up aerial views of cities with a unique "side on" perspective along with other new features.
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A Compilation Search Technology Book Reviews - Want to hack together your own search engine? Curious to dig deeper into data mining? Here‘s a compilation of various search-related book reviews published in SearchDay over the past several years.
=== Dec. 6, 2005 ===
Two Alternative Local Search Services - Local search from the major players is steadily improving, but meanwhile, two smaller players are making impressive advances in providing search results from your own neighborhood.
=== Dec. 5, 2005 ===
More Online Books Resources - NetLibrary and The Online Books Page are two excellent services for searching for and reading online books, offering access free of charge.
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Below are posts from theSearch Engine Watch Blog since the last newsletter and not mentioned above. Want to keep up on daily news from the blog? Visit the home page or subscribe to theblog feed. Note that references to "I" may becoming from Danny Sullivan, Gary Price or Chris Sherman, all of whom post to the blog.
=== Jan. 4, 2006 ===
Google Wants Your Feedback About Their New "Bigdaddy" Data Center -Google‘s Matt Cutts offers a FAQ of sorts with information about the new "Bigdaddy" data center thatMatt mentioned about a month ago in a response to a post on his blog. In this new blog post Matt says that Google is now ready to collect feedback about the new center....[MORE]
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YACFA: Yet Another Click Fraud Article & A New Click Fraud Test Underway -How Click Fraud Could Swallow the Internet  from Wired delivers unto us Yet Another Click Fraud Article (forthwith known as YACFA) with relatively little that most of you haven‘t read before. Far, far more interesting isThe Truth About Click Fraud over at WebGuerrilla, which will hopefully take us beyond all the stuff we‘ve heard before with some actual testing....[MORE]. See also:
Click Fraud Case Against Google Continues Its Way Through Federal CourtClick Defense Out, AIT In as Lead Plaintiff in Click Fraud Case Against Google
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Google Experimenting With Drop-Down Boxes - Google‘s taking a page from Lycos circa 1998 and putting various search options into a drop-down box. See also:New Google UI Test: Vertical Search Links In New Left Column.
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Purchase Items and/or Compare Prices With Your Mobile Phone or Device - Bob Tedeschi‘s article in the New York Times:Those Born to Shop Can Now Use Cellphones, takes a look at how eBay, Amazon, and others are allowing shoppers to purchase items via their mobile phone or device....[MORE]
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New: Google Garb for Your Dog - If Fido or Rover love Google (or their owners do (-:), your pets can now show their support with new Google dog collars and leashes now available from the Google Store. Collars are available forlarge ormedium sized dogs. Leashes are also availablelarge ormedium size dogs. Bow wow!!!
=== Jan. 3, 2006 ===
Search By Drawing: Meet Retrievr & Search By Sketch Demos From Purdue & Princeton - An experimental search tool calledretrievr allows the user to find related Flickr images by drawing a sketch, along with some related tools....[MORE]
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New OSX Dashboard Widget for MSN Virtual Earth; Yahoo Maps Gets a Widget - A new version of anMSN Virtual Earth widget was released over the weekend for Mac OSX Dashboard and Yahoo Maps nowhas a widget (Mac and PC) that‘s available here.
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Happy 10th Birthday To Dogpile - Today, metasearch toolDogpile begins celebrating its 10th birthday. Congrats! Here‘s the Dogpile home page fromDecember of 1996 anda USENET announcement from its original developer, Aaron Flin....[MORE]
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Google Still Searching For Executive Chefs - Interviews for jobs at Google are known to be very difficult and demanding on potential job candidates. I wonder if the same "tough" interview approach also applies to those who want to cook for Googlers at the Mountain View Googleplex? Many months after Google started to look for a couple of new excutive chefs, they‘re still looking....[MORE]
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Sources for Product Reviews Online - On Christmas Day,the New York Times offered a look at several services that allow end users to supply and share reviews of different projects. Well-known services like Consumer Reports and Consumer Guide are mentioned. Other sources like CNET, Yahoo, Amazon.com, and epinions are also included. Additionally, a couple of other new and potentially useful services got some ink....[MORE]
=== Dec. 29, 2005 ===
Google Will Be Default Search Engine on Opera‘s Mobile Browsers -Dirson reports that Opera (the browser company) Google will be the default search tool on all of Opera‘s mobile browsers including the newOpera Mini set for release next month. The TechWeb article:Google To Supply Search For Opera‘s Mobile Browsers, has more....[MORE]
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Google and Yahoo Both Make Top 10 of 2005 ImagePower. Newsmaker Brands Survey - A new survey out today ranking America‘s leading brands has both Google and Yahoo in the Top 10. Other Internet players in the Top 10 "winning brands" for 2005 include Amazon.com and eBay....[MORE]
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YouTube Pops Above Google Video Thanks To SNL Clip - So here‘s a mashup for you. I wroteearlier about YouTube and how I didn‘t really trust Alexa data to prove the popularity of anything. Garywrote of a popular Saturday Night Live skit being shared through places like YouTube and Google Video. LeeAnn Prescott over at Hitwise puts the two together with some nice charts to show YouTube‘s rising popularity plus a big boost it got thanks to that SNL clip. See also:
Saturday Night Live Skit Mentions MapQuest, Yahoo Maps and Google MapsYouTube For Finding, Sharing Video
=== Dec. 28, 2005 ===
New Entry: Medio Joins Mobile Search Space in U.S. - Earlier this month, the Red Herring story:Medio to Debut Mobile Search, looked at Seattle basedMedio, joining other companies in the U.S. mobile search space. The company already offers its service in Europe in a deal with Nokia....[MORE]
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The Googleshank Redemption Reloaded - Remember mewriting about theGoogleshank Redemption? If not, it was the story of site owner Allan Dick feeling powerless to get help from Google. Proving the power of the blog, Allan found that chronicling his experience finally got action. Google‘s Matt Cutts got in touch, and Allansays things are looking up.
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Google Knocked For Allowing Off Topic Ford Explorer Ads -Ford Explorer Teaches Me to Ignore Google AdWords Ads from Aaron over at SEO Book looks at Ford Explorer ads delivered via Google AdSense that appeared recently to be all over the web to him and others. His main issue is why Google allowed off-topic delivery. The ads were apparently showing up on pages that seemed to have nothing to do with cars, trucks, SUV what motorized transport....[MORE]
=== Dec. 27, 2005 ===
Consumer Reports Looks at Travel Search Meta Engines in New Study - Consumer Reports/Consumer Web Watch has published a new study that looks at how 11 travel search meta engines and aggregators likeKayak,Mobissimo, andYahoo FareChase perform. The full text of the 29 page report (PDF)is available here at no charge. A briefnews release is also available....[MORE]
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Technorati Adds Trend Charts, Other Features, Rubel Offers "Hacking" Tips - ViaMicro Persuasion, this post from the Technoratiblog pointing out several new features that are now available including a blog finder widget, trend charts (enter a term, see how many posts in the past 30 days mention it) and improved extracts (what others call snippets.) For more Technorati fun, take a look at this post from Steve Rubel from early last month:Ten Technorati Hacks.
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Winners Of The 2005 Search Blog Awards Announced - The results of Search Engine Journal‘s2005 Search Blog Awards are in. We‘re thrilled to be winners in one category (and thank you all for making it happen with your votes!) along with a number of other great sites in other categories. A rundown is below. And as I saidbefore, be sure to check out all thenominated blogs, because they‘re all excellent to put on your reading list....[MORE]
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Transcripts and Video: Authors of Books About Google Interviewed on TV - In the past few days, the authors of both recent books about Google and web search have been interviewed on TV or featured in TV news reports....[MORE]
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Google To Limit Photo Resolution Of Israeli Military Sites - We reportedearlier about a great New York Timesarticle looking at how various governments around the world have been made nervous by aerial images posted in Google Maps. Nowvia Google Blogoscoped, there‘s areport out of Israel that Google has agreed to limit the resolution of military installations in Israel, something the NYT article says is mandated by US law. See also:Governments Ask Google to Turn a Blind Eye.
=== Dec. 26, 2005 ===
4info.net Adds New Services for Mobile Web Users -4info.net is a mobile search service (SMS, Web, Mobile Web) that we‘ve blogged about a lot in 2005 and I continue to be impressed with. I also use it on a very regular basis. The San Francisco company is ending the year with even more search tools for the mobile web user....[MORE]
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CiteSeer Offers New Feature; Mirrors of Database Also Added - Years beforeGoogle Scholar was launched, Professor Lee Giles, from Penn State University was online with a specialty database namedCiteSeer (some also might also know it as ResearchIndex). CiteSeer search technology continues to be developed. This database offers access to "scholarly literature" found on the open web in several disciplines including information technology, computer science, telecom, and more....[MORE]
=== Dec. 24, 2005 ===
Tracking Santa - Over on my personal blog, I mentioned how I loved to hear Santa tracked over the radio when I was a kid and how I do it online today with my own kids. Then I thought it was kind of a searchy things -- after all, many of you (or your kids) may be wanting to track Santa tonight....[MORE]
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German SEO Forums Launched - Sprechen Sie Deutsch? Heute hab Ich gelernen ThomasB hat ihre neue SEO "forums" hier:Online Marketing Talk. And now you know why native German speakers grimace -- including my brother-in-law -- when I try out my two years of college German on them. You want to talk suchmaschinenoptimierung? That‘s a new place to check out.
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Jews For Jesus Sues Google Over Blogger Blog -Jews for Jesus Group Sues Google from Reuters covers Google being sued by the group in New York to force it to give up thejewsforjesus.blogspot.com blog hosted on Google‘s Blogger service. Haven‘t seen the suit documents, so it‘s unclear whether the "right" to the group‘s own name it demands only means it wants jewsforjesus not to be used as part of the address or whether it simply thinks the site shouldn‘t be allowed at all. See also:Full Text of Complaint Filed in Jews for Jesus v. Google Case.
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Meta Search Tagged Content With Wink - Want to meta search across content that has been specifically tagged in various ways? New search engineWink is now live allowing that. It pulls back material categorized over at Digg, Yahoo My Web, del.iou.us, plus you can now tag things you find within Wink itself....[MORE]
=== Dec. 22, 2005 ===
Ending The Year With A Google Sandbox Reexamination - Since everyone else is blogging about our Google Sandbox discussion at the Search Engine Watch Forums, guess I‘d better get on it as well.Getting Out Of Google Sandbox Using Subdomain & Redirection was the thread that started things, where moderator Dave Naylor shared with members the tip he gave out at SES Chicago on breaking out of a sandbox-like effect....[MORE]
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WebmasterWorld Back Among The Spiderable - WebmasterWorld, whichbanned Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask Jeeves and other search spiders last month, is now allowing them back in and thus returned to the land of the living, in terms of being listed with search engines....[MORE]
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What‘s A Scraper Site - It‘s easy to assume that everyone knows what a scraper site is. Everyone doesn‘t -- or at least, they know what a scraper site is, they just don‘t know what they are commonly called.Scraper Sites and SE Ambiguity: What is Your Sites Reading Level? from Stuntdubl gives you a nice rundown on how scrapers grab search results to make "content" that‘s typically host to Google AdSense ads -- and asks the same question on the minds of many, why does Google fund this junk?
=== Dec. 20, 2005 ===
Yahoo‘s Mayer and Zawodny Ready to Debut New Webcast/Podcast on Webmaster Radio - 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 about Silicon Valley‘s newest and hottest companies....[MORE]
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New Resource Pages About Google‘s Content Network Now Available, Includes Optimization Tool - A note on theInside AdWords blog points to this new page with a bunch of information about theGoogle Content Network., from Contextual Targeting, Site Targeting, Ad Formats, Pricing, Tools, Partner Sites. Along with this new resource, Googlehas released a tool with six tips to help optimize your content for the network.
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Ask Jeeves Adds Translations, Pronunciations & Synonym Lookups - Word from Oakland today that Ask Jeeves has just added page translation, easier synonym lookups and definitions with pronunciations....[MORE]
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Lexar Flash Drives To Come Pre-Loaded with Google Software - Lexar, the well-known maker of USB flash drives, announced today a partnership with Google that will bring Google applications like Picasa, Google Toolbar and Google Desktop Search pre-loaded onto Lexar USB Drives....[MORE]
=== Dec. 19, 2005 ===
First Issue Of Google‘s Newsletter For Librarians Released; Cutts Writes On Inverted Index & Ranking - Google‘s promised quarterly newsletter for librarians has finally come out with a nice article on how an inverted index works from Google‘s Matt Cutts....[MORE]
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Specialty Databases (Verticals) The Focus Of A Wall Street Journal Article - "Beyond Google" from the Wall Street Journal covers the many vertical search engines out there that help you locate information better than Google can, in many cases....[MORE]
=== Dec. 17, 2005 ===
New Issue Of Information Science Publication Focuses On "Paid Search" - Here‘s a bunch of new reading for your reading lists. The December/Januaury Issue of the Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T)is new online (free). This issue of the Bulletin was, edited byDr. Bernard Jansen from Penn State University and features a look at what‘s termed "paid search"....[MORE]
=== Dec. 16, 2005 ===
New or Improved Databases With U.S. Government Information - A brief post to point out one new and one updated compilation of databases, that might be of value to people tying to find U.S. government information....[MORE]
=== Dec. 15, 2005 ===
New Year Will Bring New Look to Yahoo Search Results Pages; Shorter Descriptions for Sponsored Listings - Paid listings on Yahoo search are about to get shorter in the new year, as they reduce to a 70 character display.
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Google Gmail Now Accessible via Mobile Phones - If you‘ve got a web-enabled mobile phone and a Gmail account, you can now access your mail on the run. Gmail mobile allows you to get your mail from just about any mobile phone browser, and most of the key features of Gmail are available in the smaller format as well. See alsoA Brief Look at Mobile Mail Access from Yahoo and MSN.
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Technorati Begins Cooking Up Ideas in their New "Kitchen" - Today,Ben Charny at eWeek reports on whereTechnorati is now "cooking up new" ideas. Yes, what Charny refers to as half-baked ideas (aka betas) are now available in theTechnorati Kitchen....[MORE]
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Search Execs Talk at MIT Forum - ViaSearchblog, word of this justreleased podcast of a forum that took place at MIT about a week ago and featured an all-star lineup of search execs from Google, Microsoft and Yahoo along withOren Etzioni from the University of Washington. Backgroundhere, direct to podcast (MP3)here.
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Yahoo Tweaks Pure Search Interface; Adds New Page Highlighting Popular Services - In the past few days, Yahoo has tweaked the look of its pure search page. The tabs can still be customized but not as easily....[MORE]
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Google Firefox Extensions For Anti-Phishing & Popping-Up Google Blog Search Results -New Firefox extensions over at Google highlights that there‘s a new anti-phishing tool now out for Firefox users plus a new add-on that lets you see what people are saying about pages you visit through Google Blog Search.
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Yahoo Dec. 2005 Update Coming -Sixth Weather Report: Yahoo! Update Tonight from Yahoo warns that an index change will be taking place tonight and provides a feedback address for anyone encountering rocky weather.Dec. ‘05 Yahoo! Weather Report: Update Underway! at our forums is a place to discuss.
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UDDI Business Registry Closing - Way back in 2001, I had a reader or two ask me aboutUDDI and a business registry that IBM, Microsoft and others were building upon it, which is now closing. Today, I got an email from Microsoft that it was pulling out of the registry....[MORE]
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New from Yahoo: Manage of All of Your Podcast Subscriptions on a Single Page - Word from Sunnyvale that Yahoo‘s has just added a new feature to theirpodcast directory calledMy Subscriptions that allows registered Yahoo users to keep track and organize all of their podcast subscriptions on a single page....[MORE]
=== Dec. 14, 2005 ===
Ask Jeeves UK Releases Smart Search Tool for Football Fans - Football fans in the UK (see, I didn‘t call it soccer) have a newAsk Jeeves Smart Search resource to use and quickly find and access info about their favorite clubs(s) and players....[MORE]
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Windows Live Location Finder & Privacy - Microsoft has responded to user concerns about the type of information that‘s transmitted and used when you use the newWindows Live Local "locate me" feature....[MORE]
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All About Microsoft‘s Fremont: Product Manager Interviewed - About 10 days ago, theweb was buzzing with news of Microsoft‘s classified ad service code named Fremont.Zachary Rodgers from Clickz, sat done with Garry Wiseman, the product manager of this yet to bepublicly released service for a Q&A interview....[MORE]
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Nielsen: Search Queries Up, Google Has 48% of All Searches, Ask Jeeves Soars in Search Volume - The MediaWeek article:Nielsen: Google Dominates, Local Grows, reports that new October, Nielsen//NetRatings ratings numbers have been released....[MORE]
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Experian Parent Buys PriceGrabber For $485 Million - Well, that didn‘t take long. Little more than a month after PriceGrabber CEO Kamran Pourzanjani told me that his company would "continue to do well as a stand-alone company," retail and financial services companyGUS PLC announced today that it has bought PriceGrabber.com for $485 million....[MORE]
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Mobile Search: 4Info.net Has Plans to Release Client Software -4INFO, the mobile search and info provider I like and use quite a bit and that has beenmentioned many times here on the blog has plans to release some client software will that run on J2ME, BREW, Symbian, BlackBerry, and Palm devices in mid-January....[MORE]
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Yahoo Plans Reality TV Show: "Wow House" - Continuing to believe that to be a media company, you‘ve got to own your own original media, Yahoo‘s planning a reality TV show.Yahoo! Wows MPG Summit, Reveals Plans For Reality Show from MediaPost covers "Wow House," where two families get $10,000 to upgrade their homes....[MORE]
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Google Releases Homepage API - Tonight, Google released a new service allowing developers the opportunity to create "modules" for the Google personalized homepage....[MORE]. See also:
Customize Your MSN Live.com Home Page with WidgetsGoogle Page Count, Amazon Search Widgets For Google Personalized Home Page
=== Dec. 13, 2005 ===
Search Engine Roundtable Launches New Online Forums - Popular search blog Search Engine Roundtable now has itsown online forums. Founder Barry Schwartz writes on why he started the forums, introduces the moderators, and morein this post....[MORE]
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A Look Back as Google‘s Library Project Passes the One Year Mark - Tomorrow, theGoogle Library Project will be one year old. It‘s been quite a year of news and controversy. Let‘s review....[MORE]
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Google Joins NASDAQ 100 Stock Index; Visualize the Index with Cool Dynamic "Heat Map" - Word that Google has been added to the NASDAQ 100 stock index. This index is, "designed to comprise the largest and most liquid nonfinancial stocks on the Nasdaq," according toThe Street.com....[MORE]
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Konfabulator Becomes Yahoo Widgets - Yahoo has renamed their Konfabulator widgets service toYahoo Widgets and at the same time released a new engine (Yahoo Widget Engine 3.0) that powers the widgets....[MORE]
=== Dec. 12, 2005 ===
New Google Catalogs Database Now Live - Google Catalogs has a slightly new look though what, if anything, has changed under the hood remains uncertain.
=== Dec. 11, 2005 ===
Melissa Data‘s Hearty Buffet Of Lookup Databases Grows Larger, More Useful - Melissa Data now offers a variety of new databases, including ZIP code maps, congressional district maps, US home sales by ZIP code and more. Below are some of the latest offerings:
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Create Your Own Collection Of Searchable RSS Feeds With ScoopGo & Blogdigger Groups - A quick post to point outTara‘s recent item  aboutScoopGo, a new tool that allows the user to create a searchable database of whatever feeds they choose....[MORE]
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Big Guys Crowd Out Little Guys in SEM Arena; Some Branding Focused Advertisers Willing to Spend "Whatever" It Takes - The Media Post article:Search Execs: Big Brands Muscling Out Small Players, reports on comments during a search engine marketing session where panelists said that as search engine marketing grows in popularity, big name advertisers (the ones with lots of money) are "crowding out" small advertisers....[MORE]
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Book Digitization: Project Gutenberg Founder Interviewed - Project Gutenberg has been around since 1971 digitizing and copying public domain books. ThisWall Street Journal Q&A interview (free) with its founder Michael Hart on book digitization, Google Book Search, and more....[MORE]
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A Recommended Reading List for Info Retrieval Geeks - If your a search and information retrieval geek, an article in the just online issue ofSIGIR Forum has a great annotated bibliography that you‘ll want to take a look at....[MORE]
=== Dec. 9, 2005 ===
Jux2 Returns! -Jux2 the metasearch/comparative search engine that won our Best Meta Search Engine site in the5th Annual Search Engine Awards, is back online and fully functioning after being sold in October oneBay for over $100,000....[MORE]
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Redesigned Yahoo Video Home Page Now Online - Today, you‘ll notice a redesignedYahoo Video home page that is much more aesthetically pleasing. You‘ll see a lot more color and three modules that include featured videos, new videos and popular clips.
=== Dec. 8, 2005 ===
Google Releases New Version of Sitemap Generator Tool - Anew version (v1.4) of the Google Sitemap Generator Tool is now availableaccording to Vanessa Fox from Google Engineering.
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Yahoo Releases International Web Search Services; Yahoo Switzerland Search Goes Live - Yahoo‘sToby Elliott points out that the company has just released the Yahoo Web Search API for all regional and country sites....[MORE]
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Tag Your Job Postings with the New MyIndeed.com - New at job metasearch vertical engine Indeed.com is the ability to tag your job search findings....[MORE]
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Search Engine Strategies Chicago: Day Four - Missed the show? Here‘s a recap of live session coverage on the first day. Seee alsoDay Three,Day Two, andDay One.
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Google Labs Quietly Releases Transit Trip Travel Planner for Portland, Oregon -Google Transit Trip Planner allows people in Portland, Oregon (only, for the moment) to plan trips with Google Maps using public transportation....[MORE]
=== Dec. 7, 2005 ===
The Birth of Yahoo Answers - Now out in beta isYahoo Answers, Yahoo‘s new social networking/online community/question answering service. The service allows any registered Yahoo user to ask just about any question and hopefully get an answer from another member of the question answering community. Access to Yahoo Answers is free....[MORE]. See also:
Other Q&A Services, Most Available For Free!Web Search History: Before Google Answers and Yahoo Answers There Was "Answer Point" From Ask JeevesThe New York Public Library and Answers.com Announce New Homework Service
=== Dec. 6, 2005 ===
Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales Interviewed on NPR - One of the most popular topics in the mainstream press the few days has been the Wikipedia. What it is, how it works and controversies over edits. Founder Jimmy Wales and Wikipedia critic John Seigenthaler discussed the service on NPR recently....[MORE]
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Human Podcast Transcribers from CastingWords.com -CastingWords.com is a new service (not much there at the moment) that instead of using technology to transcribe podcasts will use human transcribers to get the job done....[MORE]
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Blinkx Releases Keyword Searchable Archive of Classic European TV Commercials Online -BlinkxTV is offering a searchable archive of more than 5000 "classic" or "vintage" European television commercials....[MORE]
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Survey: Google Earns Top Corporate Reputation in Only Seven Years - A Wall Street Journal article (free):Ranking Corporate Reputations, reports that Google placed third this year in the annual Reputation Quotient ranking, a debut on the list that puts it only behind only No. 1 Johnson & Johnson and No. 2 Coca-Cola Co....[MORE]
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Eric Schmidt Lays Out Google‘s Ten Golden Rules - Google CEO Eric Schmidt, along with co-author UC Berkeley professorHal Varian,, has written:"Google‘s Ten Golden Rules" for Newsweek on getting the most out of knowledge workers....[MORE]
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Links to RSS Feeds and Podcasts from the U.S.Government - Here‘s a quickie set of reference links for you. If you‘re looking for RSS feeds and podcasts from U.S. Government,FirstGov offers a couple of useful directories with links to both types of material....[MORE]
=== Dec. 5, 2005 ===
Looking for Revenue Opportunities in Microsoft‘s Plans to Digitize British Library Materials - In an exclusive Information World Review interview:BL opens up to Microsoft and reveals revenue aims, Alistair Baker, Microsoft‘s UK managing director, talks about both parties [The BL and Microsoft] investigating new business opportunities in therecently announced arrangement that will have MS scanning 25 million pages (about 100,000 books) of onlyout-of-copright material that will become available viaMS Book Search, a member of theOpen Content Alliance. Hmm. Since the recent announcement is about books from what Baker has to say perhaps MS and the BL are thinking about digitizing other types of objects?
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Eric Schmidt Tells John Battelle: "We‘re Not in the Portal Business" - In a newQ&A style interview in Business 2.0 , the covers a lot of ground, John "The Search" Battelle chats with Google‘s CEO, Eric Schmidt....[MORE]
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Exploring the Googleverse on SiliconValley.com‘s Roundtable - This week the team at SiliconValley.com are running on online roundtable discussion titled:
The Googleverse: Intelligently designed and evolving. Topics range from search and ads to Google as a network to ethics & trust and trust. The roundtable features an impressive list of particpants including John Battelle, Charlene Li, Rich Skrenta, Gautam Godhwani, Steve Arnold, Michael Bazeley, and many others including some person who happens to be the News Editor of Search Engine Watch.More here.
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Podscope Now Offering Keyword RSS Feeds - Today,Podscope is announcing that users can set up keyword-based RSS feeds and receive alerts when certain words are uttered in a podcast or another type of audio or video program....[MORE]
=== Dec. 4, 2005 ===
The Fear of Google Continues as a Hot Topic and Popular News Story - Reuters has a lengthy look at how Madison Avenue advertisersfear Google in the articleMadison Avenue faces Google fears. We‘re reading article like this on a very regular basis these days...[MORE]
=== Dec. 3, 2005 ===
New from from The Internet Movie Database: The Movie Keyword Analyzer, Fun!!! - IMDb has a new tool that lets you find titles that have a particular keyword and then presents a tally of all keywords from the titles that matched your initial keyword set.
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Gary Price‘s Other Blogs: Resources, Tools, and Documents - I thought I would take just a brief moment of your time and invite you to visit/bookmark/whatever what have become known around here as Gary‘s "other sites" or blogs. I wouldn‘t call them personal but I hope you call them useful and interesting....[MOPE]
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Collaborative Web Tagging Will Be Topic of Workshop at WWW 2006 - Collaborative taggers should tag the following item "workshop"....[MORE]
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Millions of eBay Items Now Searchable on MSN Shopping - Just in time for the holiday shopping season and interesting move from MS. You can now search MSN Shopping and find items up for auction or for sale on eBay and still get access to many of the refinements available on the actual eBay site....[MORE]
=== Dec. 2, 2005 ===
Google: From AdWords and AdSense to Publication Ads - BusinessWeeks‘s Ben Elgin takes an in-depth look at what appears to be Google‘s growing interest in the publication ad business in the new article:Can Google Go Glossy? It was just the other day thatI blogged about numerous job openings in NYC to work selling, mananging, etc. with Google‘s publication ad business that Sergey Brin says is an R&D experiment....[MORE]
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On Craigslist, Job Loses at Mainstream News Organizations, and Citizen Journalism - The San Franscisco Weekly reports in the articleCraig$list.com, that the very popular classified ad site, its founder calls it an online marketplace "like a fleamarket," is beginning to cause layoffs at well-known and established news organizations. The story offers all sorts of interesting facts....[MORE]
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Yahoo Adds RSS Alerts Delivered via E-Mail, IM, or SMS - In a blog post, Scott Gatzpoints out that viaYahoo‘s very robust Alert Service you can now have alerts for (for ANY RSS feed) delivered to you via e-mail, SMS (text messaging), and/or Yahoo Messenger. Very cool and for me, very useful, especially the SMS alerts....[MORE]
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Want to keep up with the latest in search news while you‘re on the go? Try our podcast, The Daily SearchCast. It‘s a 10-15 minute recap of the previous day‘s news. How to tune-in?
Subscribe to ourmain SEW Blog feed, and you‘ll receive the podcasts automatically when we alert readers to them each day.
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Here are the last two days‘ worth of shows:
Daily SearchCast, Jan. 3, 2006: Top Search Trends Of 2005, Google‘s Plans To Experiment With Graphical Ads, "Google Cubes" PCs Coming & More!
Daily SearchCast, Dec. 28, 2005: Google Base Switches To Jump Pages, Some Publishers Ask Google Book Search To Display Pages From Their Books, Top Search Blogs Get Awards, Maps Make Saturday Night Live & More!
You can find all shows from previous days listed on the Daily SearchCasthome page. Just select any file to download it and listed on your computer or digital audio device.
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News each day, throughout the day, alerts of new discussion threads from ourSearch Engine Watch Forums and more -- we have a newsletter or feed that covers all of these. See ourSearch Engine Newsletters & Web Feeds for a full rundown on everything we offer, as well as special buttons to let you subscribe via news readers such as Rojo, My MSN, Bloglines, Feedster, Newsgator, Pluck and My Yahoo. Thanks toFeedBurner for providing our feed tracking and management services!
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