Search Engine Watch Blog Items
Updated postings on the Search Engine Watch Blog. Includes stories that have run in Search Engine Watch with references to stories from across the web.
Please note that all of these links lead to outside sites and we are not responsible for the content located on them.
Microsoft and Facebook Enter Into Search Partnership
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Microsoft Senior Vice President Satya Nadella announced at the company's financial analyst meeting that their partnership with Facebook has been extended to include search.
The existing partnership has Microsoft serving up banner and sponsored ads on the popular social network. Last year, Microsoft paid $240 million to own a 1.6% stake in Facebook, a private company.
Microsoft expects Facebook members to see the integrated Live Search, including search ads, by the end of the 2008.
Earlier today, Facebook announced a new initiative, opening up its platform to aggregate feeds from other sites, including local search site Citysearch and other social networks such as Digg and Twitter.
In March, Microsoft announced its alternative to Google's OpenSocial, a data portability partnership across 5 social networks: Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, Tagged and LinkedIn.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has announced a reorganization which will split the Platforms and Services Division into two new divisions: Windows/Windows Live and Online Services.
AdMob Launches New iPhone Ad Solutions, Offers Free Advertising to iPhone Dev...
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Leading mobile advertising provider AdMob has announced brand spanking new advertising solutions designed specifically for the iPhone. Advertising options will be made available for both branding and performance and function in both browser and native applications.
Have an app you want to promote? AdMob is giving away a total of $1 million in advertising to iPhone developers wanting to market their applications.
"AdMob has seen enormous growth in both our iPhone traffic and advertiser interest. This new class of device, led by the iPhone, is pivotal to the future of mobile browsing and of mobile media business models," said Omar Hamoui, CEO and Founder of AdMob. "We are excited to leverage our platform to take advantage of the uniquely mobile connected experiences that the iPhone makes possible."
AdMob recently forged a partnership with DoubleClick to integrate their ads into their mobile ad network. DoubleClick was recently acquired by Google.
SEW: Link Building with Customers
Thursday, July 24, 2008
When it comes to link building, a great source for links might be right under your nose! In today's link building column, "Link Building with Customers," Justilien Gaspard talks about asking your customers for links as well as embarking on link recovery missions.
» Full story
Facebook Connect Aims to Aggregate Social Media While Protecting User Privacy
Thursday, July 24, 2008
In May, Google announced a new initiative called Friend Connect that enables site owners to add social media to their websites, and allows internet users to connect their social accounts more seamlessly. But while Facebook was initally part of the effort, later they banned Google's Friend Connect from their site, citing issues with privacy and the redistribution of user data.
Instead of waiting for Google to comply, Facebook has announced their own initiative: Facebook Connect. It's designed to do basically be a FriendFeed - to aggregate information from users' various profiles on numerous social sites in order to view it all in one place. Here's the details of what to expect:
Trusted Authentication - easily authenticate into partner sites using your Facebook accountReal Identity - leverage your real identity across the Web in a trusted environmentFriend Linking - take your friends with them wherever they go, enabling trusted social context anywhere on the WebDynamic Privacy - assurance that the same privacy settings users have set up on Facebook will follow them wherever they decide to login throughout the WebSocial Distribution - share actions on partner sites with your friends back on Facebook through feedsStraight out of the gate, the following sites will utilize Facebook Connect:
Digg
Citysearch
Twitter
Seesmic (online video conversation tool)
Six Apart (blog publishing platform)
Hulu
CBS.com
CNET
CollegeHumor
Disney-ABC
Evite
Flock (social media browser developed on Firefox)
Kongregate
Loopt (new social network for iPhone)
Plaxo
Radar
Red Bull
Socialthing! (think FriendFeed)
StumbleUpon
The Insider
Uber
Vimeo
Xobni
What do you think of Facebook Connect? Let us know in the comments!
Knol Is Googlepedia
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Knol is knowledge without the W(ikipedia) and an edge.
Knol is the newest product launched by Google. The Wikipedia competitor is in beta. Get ready for Knollywood.
Knol is basically Blogspot on steroids, organized by topic.
Google states the key principle behind Knol is authorship. Every knol will have an identified author (or group of authors). It's their knol, their voice, their opinion. Google expects multiple knols on the same subject.
With Knol, we are introducing a new method for authors to work together that we call "moderated collaboration." With this feature, any reader can make suggested edits to a knol which the author may then choose to accept, reject, or modify before these contributions become visible to the public.
People can submit comments, rate, or write a review of a knol. At the discretion of the author, a knol may include ads from our AdSense program. If an author chooses to include ads, Google will provide the author with a revenue share from the proceeds of those ad placements.
The New Yorker magazine will allow any author to add one cartoon per knol from the New Yorker's cartoon repository. Cartoons are an effective (and fun) way to make your point, even on the most serious topics.
Of course, The New Yorker is a publisher.
Google will continue to claim that Google is not.
It's like the famous New Yorker cartoon, "On the Internet, no one knows you're a publisher."
Former Yahoo, Tacoda Exec Heads to interCLICK
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Jason Lynn, Director of Solutions Engineering for Yahoo/Right Media is exiting the Sunnyvale search engine to become Executive Vice President of Product Management at online advertising network interCLICK. Prior to his Yahoo/Right Media stint, Lynn was Director of Product Management at behavioral targeting firm TACODA, which was acquired by AOL in July 2007.
That's the same month Yahoo finalized its acquisition of Right Media.
Lynn joins an exodus of Yahoo execs as of late. Network Division Executive Vice President Jeff Weiner left and became Executive in Residence at two venture capital firms. Vish Makhijani, Senior Vice President of Search, is now heading up the Bay Area operations of Yandex, a Russian language search engine. Brad Garlinghouse, Sr. VP and author of the Peanut Butter Manifesto, and Qi Lu, Executive Vice President of Search and Advertising Technology have left as well.
Founders of other Yahoo-acquired companies aren't sticking around either. Flickr co-founders Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake and del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter have said their goodbyes.
Baidu Profits Soar 87% in Second Quarter
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Google, Microsoft and Yahoo may have disappointed Wall Street, but Baidu is proving to be a Dark Knight in this tough economy.
Boosted by advertising sales in advance of the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese search engine posted an 87% jump in profits in the second quarter of 2008. Net profit came in at $38.6 million, beating expectations of $35.5 million.
Baidu owned 63% of the search market in China, accoring to iResearch. Google had 26% and Yahoo came in third at 8%.
source: Reuters
Microsoft Reorganizes Platforms & Services Division; Kevin Johnson is Out
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Microsoft has announced the reorganization of its Platforms and Services Division (PSD). The department will split into two new divisions: Windows/Windows Live and Online Services. Kevin Johnson, PSD President, is leaving Microsoft to head up Juniper Networks.
Senior vice presidents Steven Sinofsky, Jon DeVaan and Bill Veghte will report directly to CEO Steve Ballmer to lead Windows/Windows Live.
The Online Services Division will be headed by a newly created senior lead position for which an executive search will be conducted among external and internal candidates. For the duration, Senior Vice President Satya Nadella will continue to lead Microsoft?s search, MSN and ad platform engineering efforts.
In a memo to Microsoft employees, CEO Steve Ballmer addressed goals for many of Microsoft's products and services. Here's what he had to say about search:
Google: We continue to compete with Google on two fronts?in the enterprise, where we lead; and in search, where we trail. In search, our technology has come a long way in a very short time and it?s an area where we?ll continue to invest to be a market leader. Why? Because search is the key to unlocking the enormous market opportunities in advertising, and it is an area that is ripe for innovation. In the coming years, we?ll make progress against Google in search first by upping the ante in R&D through organic innovation and strategic acquisitions. Second, we will out-innovate Google in key areas?we?re already seeing this in our maps and news search. Third, we are going to reinvent the search category through user experience and business model innovation. We?ll introduce new approaches that move beyond a white page with 10 blue links to provide customers with a customized view of their world. This is a long-term battle for our company?and it?s one we?ll continue to fight with persistence and tenacity.
Yahoo: Related to Google and our search strategy are the discussions we had with Yahoo. I want to emphasize the point I?ve been making all along?Yahoo was a tactic, not a strategy. We want to accelerate our share of search queries and create a bigger pool of advertisers, and Yahoo would have helped us get there faster. But we will get there with or without Yahoo. We have the right people, we?ve made incredible progress in our technology, and we?ll continue to make smart investments that will enable us to build an industry-leading business.
What do you think about Microsoft's reorganization? Will Kevin Johnson's departure hurt them? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
Related Reading:
Microsoft Adds Record Number of Employees, Rules Out Acquisitions
Microsoft to Build Search Technology Center in Europe
Microsoft to Work on Live Search Reputation
SEW Experts: The Top 4 Best Facebook Practices
Thursday, July 24, 2008
When engaging in social media, companies are often encouraged to engage consumers on Facebook. In today's Brand Equity column, "The Top 4 Best Facebook Practices," Erik Qualman explains why playing in this space is not like traditional marketing methods.
» Full story
Yahoo Researcher Seeks to Combine Semantic Search Methods
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Yahoo researcher Peter Mika has written up an extensive article on semantic search. First he talks about the limitations to syntax-based search:
It is almost impossible to return search results that relate to the secondary sense of a term?especially if a dominant sense exists?for example, try searching for George Bush the beer brewer as compared to the PresidentThe capabilities of computational advertising, which is largely also an IR problem (for example, retrieving matching ads from a fixed inventory), are clearly impacted because of the sparsity of advertisements.When no clear key exists, search engines are unable to perform queries on descriptions of objects. For example, try searching for the author of this article with the keywords ?semantic web researcher working for yahoo.?Current search technology is unable to satisfy any complex queries requiring information integration such as analysis, prediction, scheduling, etc. An example of such integration-based tasks is opinion mining regarding products or services. While there have been some successes in opinion mining with pure sentiment analysis, it is often the case that users like to know what specific aspects of a product or service are being described in positive or negative terms and to have the search results appear aggregated and organized. Information integration is not possible without structured representations of content.Multimedia queries are also difficult to answer, as multimedia objects are typically described with only a few keywords (tagging) or sentences. This is typically too little text for the statistical methods of IR to be effective.Mika says there are two approaches to semantic search: Natural Language Processing (NLP) and the Semantic Web.
Natural Language Processing "builds on the automatic analysis of text." Semantic search company hakia is an example of natural language processing. Interestingly, hakia uses Yahoo search technology, including the recently announced Yahoo's BOSS (Build Your own Search Service). Powerset, which was recently acquired by Microsoft, is another example of NLP. These NLP semantic search providers "extract entities from text, disambiguate them against large-scale background knowledge sources (PowerSet uses Freebase, Hakia has its own ontology), and then record the relationships as found in the text." Users can query by asking full questions, though many still use keywords.
Semantic Web "aims to make the web more easily searchable by allowing publishers to expose their metadata." Mika says most publishers are willing to share their data if it results in increased traffic. Plus, semantic web allows publishers to avoid costs and quality issues associated with NLP. But last year, Yahoo researcher Mor Naaman declared the Semantic Web dead. Naaman's reasoning was the limitation of microformats, but Mika says that the new RDFa standard would have greater capabilities.
What Mika wants to do is to integrate the best of NLP and semantic web. He says Yahoo's SearchMonkey platform allows for this integration to occur.
To dig into all the technical nitty gritty, check out Mika's full article, "Semantic Search Arrives at the Web."
15% of Fortune 500 companies have blogs
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
PRWeek reports that a new study conducted by Burson-Marsteller has found that 15% of Fortune 500 companies communicate with consumers via blogs.
The survey, conducted in February and March this year, found that 74 Fortune 500 companies actively maintain blogs, many of them technology-related corporations. The top four industries with blogs were: Computers and Office Equipment (IBM, Dell, etc.); Network and Other Communications Equipment (Motorola, Lucent Technologies, etc.); Semiconductors and Other Electrical Components (Intel, AMD, etc.); and Internet Services and Retailing (Amazon, Google, etc.).
Of course, the next step is learning how to optimize your blog. For that, may I recommend that representatives of Fortune 500 companies attend the "SEO Through Blogs & Feeds" session on Wednesday, Aug. 20, at SES San Jose. The session will be moderated by Rebecca Lieb, Contributing Editor, ClickZ, and the speakers are:
* Chris Boggs, Search Engine Watch Expert & Manager, SEO, Brulant, Inc.
* Lee Odden, CEO, TopRank Online Marketing
* Amanda Watlington, Owner, Searching for Profit
* Daron Babin, CEO, Webmaster Radio
Check out the session to learn more about the unique advantages that optimized blogs and RSS feeds offer to companies large and small.
SEM Platform Provider Kenshoo Opens U.S. Office
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Tel Aviv-based search engine marketing platform provider, Kenshoo, has announced plans to open an office in the United States. The office will be located in San Francisco. Kenshoo has a European subsidiary in London as well.
Kenshoo provides a third generation SEM platform called KENSHOO SEARCH.
"We see North America as a key market and are very happy to hit the ground running. Following our plan, we have decided to take the needed step and establish a local company. This move will help us expand our already solid base of U.S. customers while improving our service." said Yoav Izhar-Prato, CEO of Kenshoo.
Related Reading:
Online Advertising Shifting from Branding to Direct Response
Local Advertisers Shifting Dollars to Internet
Global Internet Ad Spend to Exceed $106 Billion by 2011
Online Ad Spend Intact Despite Weakening Economy
Google Rumored to Buy Digg for Third Time
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
A few months ago we explained why Digg would be worth $200 million to Google.
Now it appears the rumor mill is reporting that Google will buy Digg for $200 million or so.
Rumor has it the two companies have signed a letter of intent and are close to a deal that will bring Digg under the Google News property.
Microsoft has an advertising deal with Digg so the deal would be a competitive blow to the Redmond giant.
This is the third time the buyout rumor has surfaced.
Is it "three strikes and you're out" or the "third time's the charm?"
Digg has yet to publicly disavow the rumor but it's still early on the West Coast.
SEW Experts: How Valid Are Your Landing Page Test Conclusions?
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Are your landing page tests telling the whole story? In today's By the Numbers column, "How Valid Are Your Landing Page Test Conclusions?," Tim Ash talks about the care and feeding of landing page tests - and their results.
» Full story
SEW Experts: The Japanese Search, Why Don't We?
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
"Drive to search" campaigns are hot in Japan. In today's Searching for Meaning column, "The Japanese Search, Why Don't We?," Kevin Ryan explains the trend and how you can implement similar techniques in your search marketing campaigns.
» Full story
