John Battelle's Searchblog

Or so says Shmoogle, which randomizes Google's results. Neat parlor trick, but somehow I sense it won't be up for long... (Thanks, Philipp)

Update: Gary has some thoughts on why the deeper point of Shmoogle is worth making.

Russell is playing with adding forms to his feeds, based on thoughts from Scot. I like this idea. I've often wondered when RSS will be hacked to the point it sort of mutates into another variant of the browser - when it does, then publishers might see it as just another window into their world, and stop worrying about RSS and learn to love it. Forms in feeds - ads in feeds - it's just another way to get the conversation out there. Long term, the OS is the browser, may the best experience win.

From the LA Times:

Ramey, 30, is part of Google's in-house advertising agency, a team called the Maximizers that helps clients navigate the complex world of search-related advertising.

Her mission is worthy of a haiku writer.

Read to the end for a haiku from an apparently frustrated Google employee.

Last month Safa Rashtchy of Piper predicted GOOG would hit 250, then he revised to 275. Now he's saying 300. I get his reports in email, and he has not uploaded this one to the web yet, but in short, he notes Google's expanded product offerings and upgraded ad networks as signs the company will continue to beat Wall St. estimates.

It might be a Stealth Bomber.

This is an interesting twist: Over at Findory, Greg and his team have introduced what they are calling "Personalized Advertising." It's AdSense, but remixed through Findory's personalized filters to be more relevant. From Greg's post:

This early version is built on top of Google AdSense, but these are not normal AdSense ads. They are not targeted merely to the content of the page, but to the individual behavior of each reader.

Update: I asked Greg how he does it, and whether it'd be against AdSense TOS to actually remix AdSense. Here's his response:

That'd be nice if we could filter AdSense, but I suspect you are correct that that would be against the terms of service. 
 
Instead, we request Google select ads based on information we extract from a combination of the content and the user's history on Findory.  It is layered on top of our personalization engine and Google's AdSense.

I've been less than kind to the Journal in the past, but I recently started subscribing to its free RSS feed (you can link to these stories) and have found myself happily reading Journal stories again. Here are a few:

Gates Casts Cold Eye on Google (keying off last week's D conference).
The Numbers Behind Blogs (a round up of sorts).
Sky High Search Wars (Space, the next frontier - satellite search wars).
How Old Media Can Survive in a New World (I found this specious, but you be the judge).

My favorite word, now a tagline at Yahoo, which launched Mindset ("Intent Driven Search) today. Greg has an interesting take on it here.

Want to return to classic Battelle Joints After Midnight stuff about intent? Of course you do!

It's too late on a Friday, and it's been too long and interesting a week, to play with this right now. Much news these past few days in my other life, and also over at Web 2.0, which is really taking shape, more as soon as I can possibly talk about it.

Goldman gets into the game with a prediction. The main question is, when does online surpass TV?

From the MediaPost coverage:

The report... also predicts that online advertising could account for as much as 7 percent of total ad spending by 2009--up from between 4 and 5 percent last year--and that search will represent more than 50 percent of all online ad dollars..... earlier this month, Forrester Research predicted that online advertising would reach $14.7 billion this year--23 percent more than Forrester's estimate for 2004 estimates. Research firm eMarketer predicted a total online advertising market of $12.9 billion this year--a 34 percent increase over eMarketer's 2004 estimate.

Cnet reports the case will move forward.

The two companies had a licensing agreement as far back as 2000 that relied on Digital's IP technology to pinpoint the physical location of Web visitors for Google so that it could better serve sponsored search results. (The parties no longer work together.) Digital balked when in 2003, Google broadened use of the geo-location technology to include serving targeted advertisements onto third-party sites in a program called Google AdSense.

Interesting to see. Google announced earlier this spring that they would be trying out new stuff, I am reminded by the folks there, and here is one example. Interactive units, it seems - "click to see ads about...."
(thanks, Rick)

So says SEW on the topic of Google needing two days to restore its control over two hijacked queries.

Two days after it appeared, Google has finally managed to get its hijacked listing restored for queries on adsense and google adsense. Two days! And this to correct a problem it has been told about for over year, a problem it largely dismissed as not being a big issue?

Tim Bray posts some questions about Google's new Adsense for Feeds. Jason Shellen responds.

Tonight Ask launched two cool new features, both innovations based on its study of how its customers use the service, according to Jim Lanzone, who runs the company's search efforts. The first, Zoom, builds on Ask's original clustering technology but goes several steps further, adding "narrowing" and "expansion" on your search based on Ask's Teoma technology. I got a preview from Jim, and while I have not really been able to bang on it, it seems quite cool. For example, a search on "the beatles" will offer "Beatles Lyrics" and "Beatles Names" as narrowing results, and "Beatlemania" and "Rolling Stones" as expansion options, among others. Another feature is "related names" which for the Beatles includes Elvis and all the four Beatles. Play with it, it's pretty neat.

Secondly, Ask is rolling out an expanded answering tool. Now, when you put in a phrase that might be understood as a question (ie "deadliest snake") Ask will do its best to offer the web's best answer. Ask will bold and enlargen the words its algorithms have concluded is the best chance to be correct. (It will also offer any number of other possible answers.) But these answers still reflect Ask's best attempt at discerning truth from what Lanzone calls "the wild west." It's a worthy caution, for when you ask "who killed JFK" you will get any number of responses. The first concludes in its bolded text: "The Warren Commission categorically stated that Lee Harvey Oswald was the killer of JFK and that he acted alone." But if you click through to the actual page from which this text is lifted, you get a conspiracist's dreamworld (or the truth, depending on your predelictions).

Stepping back from this, Lanzone says that in tests, the new web answer feature increased click throughs on the first result by 200 percent. "Our goal is to decrease the number of people who come to service and can't find what they want," he said. He added that it's Ask's goal to keep creating new features that, once sampled, will make folks dedicated users of Ask's searchers. Just in time, for apparently Diller intends to start pushing a lot of new traffic Ask's way in the coming months. Should be interesting to see how it turns out. My take on this is simple: Ask is resurgent, it's got a strong service, it keeps innovating, and it's got IAC behind it now. Don't expect them to stay 25 points behind Yahoo and Google for long.

PS - If Diller wants to change Ask's name to Jeeves, he better read Gary - someone else owns the URL.

Evan's Odeo in Businessweek

With his new company Odeo, Williams and partner Noah Glass aim to build a one-stop Web site where the masses can find and subscribe to podcasts, and create new podcasts with ease. Odeo will then help match advertisers to the newly created podcasts or let podcasters charge a subscription fee to listeners.

And Philip's AdBrite in the LA Times:

He persuaded Sequoia Capital, the blue-chip Silicon Valley venture capital firm that backed such companies as Google Inc. and Apple Computer Inc., to invest $4 million in his method of placing ads on websites. He moved from New York City to San Francisco with dreams of turning AdBrite into the next billion-dollar company.

In some ways, Kaplan's story is the story of the Internet: Both worked through their youthful indiscretions and are coming back in a more sure-footed, sober way. After 10 years of booms and busts, the Internet has proved itself a medium capable of generating billions of dollars from the kinds of ads Kaplan is selling.

Check out this extraordinary story in New York magazine by my friend John Heilemann. It chronicles the intense and very personal case of a man in New York who is suing a boys choir school. Larry Lessig, a hero to many in the Web 2.0 world, is not only the lead lawyer in the case, he's the driving character of the piece. Well worth the read.

So says Forrester, MediaPost reports.

Answers.com traffic has spiked since it got the nod from Google for its definition service. Here's a comparison traffic graph with Ask on Alexa. Impressive. See that spike in the blue line? That's when Google started pointing to it (right after it shed its sub model and went free).

Barry Diller took the stage at D today (see my interview here) and spent the first half hour or so talking about search, and why IAC bought Ask. Among the gems: "We were defensive about search...due to fears of disintermediation...but then realized....life will start with the search box."

Diller went on to declare that search will be the de facto interface to the screen, and I certainly agree. He then told the story of how they came to the decision to buy Ask. The team made a graph of market share, and saw Ask at 6-7 percent, Google and Yahoo at over 30. Could IAC move Ask to the right, to gain more market share? "If the answer was yes, then the acquisition made sense," Diller said.

Diller believes the answer is yes. He also believes Ask is a "differentiated" product, one that if more folks knew about, would take share from the incumbents. This is a process he's run before - Fox was a differentiated product which took share from the three incumbent networks. "I love competing against larger players as a newer entrant," he said. "Ask as a standalone company was constrained."

Among other things, Diller hinted he might change Ask's name from Ask Jeeves to "something with one word," claimed that CitySearch broke even last month for the first time ever and is poised to win in local search through its vast databases of structured local information, and claimed that in the end, search is a media business (yup), and that Yahoo and Google will not be able to hold onto their commanding leads in market share forever.

Gary points to MarketWatch and speculates on Google driving new ad models based on a clearinghouse approach. It's pretty much where things are already, to be honest, with more site specific striping. Publishers already see AdSense as a place to clear unused inventory. This would simply be the next step.

Here at D I got a chance to talk with Perry Evans, a mapping and local search entrepreneur who is working on a new company called Aptas. Aptas is working to re-structure yellow pages data to make local search more relevant. The company is partnering with several yellow pages companies (Dex, for example) to bring a new kind of local search site to market, and Evans makes a pretty convincing case as to why Yahoo, IAC, Google, et al don't necessarily have the market sewed up. He also makes a good case as to why the yellow pages still matter (I certainly have written them off from time to time).

For one, he points out that most yellow pages companies are now owned by LBO/private equity firms, and therefore have access to very deep pockets and a very real desire to leverage the yellow pages' assets into new, high growth markets. Clearly, local search is such a market. In other words, the yellow pages are no longer run by sclerotic RBOC managers, but rather rapacious financiers looking to take their properties public, and to do that, they need a growth story.

Secondly, Evans points out that there are plenty of ways to find distribution beyond the portals - including and especially mobile. In other words, just because we go to Yahoo Local now, does not mean we will in the future, especially if someone has a better solution. Evans claims to be working on such a solution, and expects to roll it out (in partnership with Dex) this Fall. He's also working on combining local search and web with 411/information over cel phones. Sign me up for that.

Here it comes, Wired reports. TechDirt says, well, the lawsuits are next.

Yeah, this is old news, but I've been thinking about Google's web accelerator. As you recall, Google introduced this in early May, but a week later stopped downloads, claiming that it had reached capacity for the time being. Not everyone was buying that as the reason. The web accelerator was derided by many webmasters for various implementation drawbacks, and when Google halted the beta distribution, many smelled the same kind of disingenuous spin that they heard with the Google News/China incident. Many believed that Google pulled the program because of the webmaster’s complaints, and manufactured the "capacity" issue as a coverup.

I'm not so sure. A very credible source insists that, for now anyway, Google simply can't handle the load. “(Google) ran out of bandwidth,” the source told me. “It’s as simple as that.”

While Google certainly does have an extraordinary infrastructure, it is not limitless, and I think this move proves it.

Gary reports:

Three of the attorneys involved in the click fraud class action lawsuit that Danny blogged about last month have started a web-based clearinghouse that will contain information about the case and links to articles about click fraud.

The site is called LostClicks.com.

Last night Steve Jobs gave a great interview with Kara and Walt, and I was with him for most of it - with him as he railed against the walled gardens of cable and mobile phone operators, with him as he showed really cool new iTunes/RSS/Podcasting integration, with him as he dodged questions about whether Apple was going to get into the video market. But then he started justifying his decision to sue a few bloggers for leaking Apple's product plans. He claims that no one has the right to publish confidential information just because they can, and so far, the courts are agreeing with him.

I say, fuck that. I've stayed out of this one because it's orthogonal to search, but it's directly related to my ability to do my job, and I am not alone. At the core of this case is a clear attempt to draw a line between professional and amateur journalism, and as a practitioner of both, I have to say it's a very dangerous line to be drawing. Should the courts decide whether the next Tom Paine has to work at the Wall Street Journal before he starting cranking out his pamphlets? I don't think so.

When I was 25 years old,I was a young, untrained reporter at MacWeek, a new Macintosh trade publication. I cultivated as many sources inside the industry as I could, trying to get scoops about what Apple might be doing next. My readers were volume buyers at corporations who were eager to know what was next, so they could plan their purchasing.

Through a source, I got my hands on an early prototype of a new machine, called the Mac IIci, which was Apple's major play in corporate America. I took it apart, had some engineers stare at it for a while, and wrote up a cover story, including a photograph of the motherboard. I was told later that corporate sales at Apple tanked for a while, as folks waited for the hot new machine.

So, why didn't they sue me? One reason: Jobs wasn't running the company then. Jobs would claim that I was working at a "real publication" - it was owned by Ziff Davis at the time - but I have to say, most bloggers today are far more qualified to run a story like the Mac IIci scoop than I was back then.

During the Q&A, someone asked him about another dumb move: pulling all Wiley books from his Apple Stores because he didn't like an unathorized biography Wiley published. Why did he do that, the questioner asked. "I didn't want to do business with them," he answered. He has that right. But then he added: "People can publish whatever they want to publish." I guess so, as long as they are "real publishers."

Forcing journalism into some kind of a "qualified" box is a very bad idea. Jobs vowed at the conference to take this issue to the Supreme Court if necessary. I hope he does, and I for one plan to fight him the whole way there. If you agree, help EFF work on this issue. Thanks.

Gates is speaking now and showing stuff that looks an awful lot like Google Satellite/Earth. In fact, most of his talk was search related. He's integrated some very detailed views into his demo, down to much more resolution than Keyhole currently shows. "Local and mapping are coming together as one," he says.

The difference between Google and MSFT's satellite stuff? "We started the satellite thing ten years ago," he said, somewhat defensively. "If it touches on search, we're going to do it, Google's going to do it, Yahoo's going to do it."

Gates also showed a search/homepage personalization tool that looks a lot like the recent stuff from Google (which looks a lot like the old stuff from Yahoo). I won't go into details, but will udpate with links if there is coverage....

Update: They actually announced "MSN Virtual Earth" at the conference. Details in extended entry. Link when it goes up. The image at left is from their "45 degree" angle. Pretty cool.

Continue reading "Gates Shows Mostly Search At D" »

I'm at the Wall St. Journal's D Conference today and Tuesday, last night was a discussion with Steve Jobs (he showed off Tiger's new Spotlight search, among other things). I'll have much more to report soon, if any Searchbloggers are here, track me down!

Doug has the scoop.

Mark promises BusinessWeek a summer release of an engine that will "world-class blog search, which we don't think exists now."

I do agree, that much as I love the current options, they are a bit slow and hard to use sometimes. And the whole world has wondered why the big G or Y don't have a blog flavored search vertical. We'll have three by August, methinks.

...to berate Google for not having any strategic center, this post from Marissa makes my list as an instant classic. From it:

Does Google have a strategy, or are we just a bunch of mad computer scientists running around building whatever we want? Today this question gets an answer: we've launched our personalized homepage via Google Labs.

I'm not sure that's an answer, but it's certainly the start of something.

A nice piece penned by Max Kalehoff.

A ranking of all Web sites based on the total volume of traffic received directly from search engines placed Wikipedia at 146 in June 2004. But in September 2004 it jumped in the ranking to 93; 71 in December 2004; and in March 2005, it was the 33rd most popular site in terms of visits received from search engines.

That means Wikipedia is impacting not only the trivial results of our Internet searches, but increasingly what content we consume and the types of answers we find to larger questions. This is a profound statement for anyone competing in the marketplace for attention to content and ideas.

Marissa Mayer is announcing a new initiative at the moment...Fusion, the first product from which is a new personalized home page. This "strategic initiative" aims to "fuse together Google's functionality into a single unique way to interact with content." It can be found in the Lab area, but don't be fooled, this is an all out response to the success of Yahoo and others in the personalized/RSS space.

This is nothing new, Excite did this in 1996. But I am quite sure it will be much better - after all, there's nine years of innovation behind it.

Mayer claims the difference with this personalized home page is that it's very easy, it's very crisp and "Googly", it integrates across all Google products. It includes feeds from Wired, Slashdot, BBC, and others, and soon full RSS support...hmmm...MyYahoo RSS, anyone?!

In any case, it's great to see Google doing this, and I am sure there will be much to say once the dust settles.

News link.

Update: I wrote the above while watching Marissa unveil the news, and the response so far has been less than overwhelming. Mostly "and....?" and "so what took you so long." But this is interesting to note: Google is not driven by the media gene, and to make a move like this is unnatural, it represents something of a breakthrough for the company. I once asked a Google exec why it didn't have a music play, like Yahoo, AOL, and MSN. The answer: "Sergey doesn't listen to much music."

So for Google to in fact implement a "my" page, and for Google to call something, *anything*, a "strategic initiative," well, I think that is a turning point.

"We were wondering what we should do for Google Travel," Brin told the Factory Tour just now. Well, Google Earth is the answer. I hinted at this in a previous post about Keyhole's new database, and I think this is it.

More as I get links....

Google is launching the kind of personalized integration tool that many thought they'd never do. At first it was thought to be called iGoogle, but the name is uncertain at this point. It's due from Google Labs later today, according to SEW. While watching the webcast I noticed a Powerpoint glitch that showed integration of address books and local search, but I did not get a screenshot in time. More as I find out more. SEW coverage. (thanks to a commentor on my site, who points to this!)

Some highlights from the Q&A session with Marissa and Peter:
Q: How many servers do you have? A: 10,000 was the last figure given (Oh, please!)
Q: Why are products in Beta so long? A: We want to leave them in beat when we are still working on them and we plan to make a lot of improvements. Froogle didn't have sort by price, for example. News didn't have sort by date. We are getting close to taking some of these products out of beta.
Q: Eric in the introduction said search is not how you think about your business. How do you think about your business? A: Think about our mission. There are lots of things that fall into that. Gmail, etc. - that are not just web search.
Q: How often do you crawl? A: It's continuous - used to be monthly. Sites like CNN we might hit every ten minutes, others daily, or weekly....

The agenda looks good. I'm listening to Marissa Mayer right now, the agenda:

10:15 am - 12:00 pm Progress in Research and Ads
Marissa Mayer - (Director, Consumer Web Products)
Peter Norvig - (Director, Engineering Search Quality)
Q&A
Break
12:00 - 12:45 pm Lunch
12:45 - 2:00 pm Opportunities Today
Jonathan Rosenberg - (Product Management)
Jeff Huber - (VP Engineering)
Dave Girouard - (General Manager, Enterprise)
Q&A
Break
2:00 - 2:45 pm Future Directions
Alan Eustace - (VP Engineering & Research)
Marissa Mayer - (Director, Consumer Web Products)
Sergey Brin - (Co-Founder & President, Technology)
2:45 - 3:45 pm Q&A – Eric Schmidt and Sergey Brin
3:45 - 4:30 pm Product Demos

"Future Directions" should be interesting. Marissa had a funny overview of how the engine works, including introducing an engineer who handles porn spam. The image at left is from her presentation. So far, pretty basic stuff, but still interesting. Peter Norvig is starting just now. The Webcast is here, FYI.

Google is having a press day today, inviting many press to the plex for a day of meetings and presentations they are calling the "Google Factory Tour." A last minute screwup in my calendar is preventing me from going, but fortunately there will be a webcast for press folks. I'll be watching that and asking questions via IM and email! Stay tuned....

It's deja vu all over again. This one speaks both IE and Firefox. PCWorld's first look here. AOL's press kit here. The site is loading very sloooooowly.

Remember when I chided Google for not thought leading and mentioned Gates' 1996 book? Well, another one is in the works. Bizweek reports:

Microsoft is in the final stages of closing a deal with a co-author, whom the company declined to name. And Gates's representatives have begun meeting with publishers to gauge their interest. The software giant won't say yet when it hopes to see a book in print.

There's little question, though, that the book will spark quite a bit of interest. The Road Ahead was a best seller, selling 2.5 million copies to date, according to Microsoft. Gates followed that book up with one written specifically for executives, called Business @ the Speed of Thought, which targeted a much smaller, elite audience. But Gates's latest look into the crystal ball will likely once again attract a wide audience.

(thanks, Craig).

Jeremy shows us why GreaseMonkey is a good thing. At least, if you work at Yahoo....BTW, GreaseMonkey is really picking up steam. When will such a platform be available for IE? Or is it already?

Headlines pulled from today's issue of I Want Media:

The Quest to Bring Consumers to the Advertising

Technological advances are helping create a fear among ad execs that conventional advertising is losing its punch. The best advertising should be "a form of entertainment or even a part of everyday life."

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/8de0e2c2-c708-11d9-a700-00000e2511c8.html

Web Pulls Ad Buyers From TV

Broadcast network execs at the "upfront" advertising drive this week worry that the Internet will steal ad dollars. Says one big advertiser: "The couch potato has been replaced by the Web surfer."

http://www.latimes.com/business/custom/cotown/la-fi-internet18may18,1,4728143.story

Bizweek reports:

Speaking to a packed auditorium at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., on May 12, Ballmer trumpeted the ripe opportunities around Microsoft's sprawling business and questioned the ability of Google (GOOG ) to maintain its edge. Clearly alluding to Microsoft's key Internet search rival, Ballmer said: "The hottest company right now -- the one nobody thinks can do any wrong -- may just be a one-hit wonder."

Yeah, and where was Microsoft seven years after it was founded? Let's see, it started in 1975, so that'd be 1982. By then, MSFT had one major product categories: DOS. Sure, it also had programming languages and some false starts in hardware and games (kind of like Google has OEM deals, the Search Appliance and Orkut), but it was, for the most part, a one trick pony. Its revenues of about $24 million in 1982 pale compare to Google's $5 billion+ run rate at year seven.

Steve, not a good call.

That was the name of the odds & ends (and corrections) column we had at Wired in the early days. It was too clever for its own good. Here's some odds & ends in the search world:

Via its desktop search, Google does deal with Lotus to search Notes. In fact, Google has launched Google Desktop Search for Enterprise, with various enterprise friendly features (ie, the damn thing was not going to fly as is in companies concerned about security). Take note, enterprise, Google has not forsaken you.

Danny finds evidence of Google doing....old fashioned marketing. In Kansas City, no less. What's wrong with Peoria?

Ebay tests new forms of internal search. One such test supports multi-faceted browsing (s you can search across categories, instead of being driven by a DOS like hierarchy.) Other bells and whistles also included. Amazing it took them this long given how search drives their business.

Matt Wells at Gigablast tells me he's at over two billion pages indexed, and his directory, based on DMOZ, rocks. It can search entire sites in a topic, includes links to the Wayback Machine, is sorted by link popularity, and much more.

GoFish announces Playlist uploading. From an email announcing this: "We created the first technology that allows virtually anybody to submit their personal playlists to our search platform, personalize the playlist with images of the contributor, descriptions, special characteristics etc.

Our system automatically appends these playlists with the accurate Album Art, 30 second sample clips, and other relevant catalog meta-data, and allows anybody searching at GoFish to find these user-playlists the same way in which they would find any major, mainstream artist’s album."

Newsgator swallowed FeedDemon. Fred has a nice analysis here.

Neat police blotter/Google Maps mashup: ChicagoCrime.org. (via ISEDB) Also, a cheap gas mashup.

Google has hired Dan Senor as VP of Communications.

...this time in the kitchen. Google chef Charlie Ayers is cashing in his chips. Now, let's review: last week it was Wayne Rosing, before that it was Cindy McAffrey, before than, Evan Williams. I am sure I am missing some. The lure of having enough money to do your own thing is very real...

No sooner did I request the Times make Times File more "Furl like" does Furl announce that it is opening up a private label version for publishers. Cool.

Expected, but nice to see. Anyone using them, have any experience? Can you run these in your feeds and, say, run Kanoodle on your site?

By now most of you have read that the Times is putting its Op Ed contributors behind a paid sub wall. (Caveat: I did a very brief consulting gig for the Times back in the Fall on these issues writ large).

Fifty bucks will get you "TimesSelect" - all the Op Ed columnists, plus the entire Times archive, plus some other bells and whistles like the Times email news alerts, some organizational tools, and some special editorial features. Times coverage is here. The release is here.

It's tough to make what was once free into a paid business, and the Times is getting some to-be-expected shit for this. But I think I understand where they are coming from on this one. They are keeping most of the site free, after all, and asking that people pay for the stuff that has proven to be the most valuable - folks' opinions.

They are also bundling a some stuff that was already paid into the price - the archives, the news alerts - and I can only imagine more will come soon. I have my own short list. To wit:

- I'd like to be part of a community. If I pay the fifty bucks, how about I get the chance to blog for the Times?At the very least, invite me to some cool Times events and parties.

-If I'm a subscriber and I have a blog, I'd like to be able to link to the stuff behind the wall. That would get serious bloggers to sign up, I'd warrant, and ensure the Times does not suffer from the same fate as the Journal.

- TimesSelect includes something called TimesFile, a sort of Furl for the NYT.com. I'd like it to be for the entire web, with a NYT filter of sorts.

The Times stated reason for doing this is to diversify its revenue mix, and I buy that logic. It's scary to be totally leveraged over advertising. However, I think it's justified in a web world, because margins are so much higher - subscription prices are justified by the costs of printing, marketing, distribution - in the print world, subscription revenue often simply covers a portion of your overhead. But with the lower overhead of online, there is more margin, and more cushion for down periods.

What I wonder is if TimesSelect will be considered "paid subs" by the offline print auditing services, and included in overall circulation by the newspaper. That would be interesting, if the answer is yes. Though I can't imagine it would be, given it's just the Op Ed columnists.

In any case, we'll all be watching closely as this rolls out. I'll be getting a sub, especially if it means I can link to the stuff behind the wall.

Update: Rick Stratton points me to this at Paid Content(scroll down): Quoting Martin Nisenholtz: "We also hope to roll out an affiliate program so the long tail can create a revenue stream for itself. If you're a blogger who uses a lot of Times Op-Ed content in your blog you can continue to (by subscribing to TimesSelect)... and, through an affiliate network, extend that to their base and they can make money on the backend off that. We think the blogosphere needs more revenmue streams."

Chris Anderson has a nice write up of Eric Schmidt's talk at the shareholder meeting, including and explanation of the the graph at left.

Damn right it is.

It's going to be a five part series this week, here's part one.

From it:

The largest beneficiary of online arbitrage is Google, which continues to leverage the basic behavior of people searching for things to drive ever more valuable commercial services; in fact, each Google application which leverages their core algorithmic platform effectively buys low and sells hi. This is probably why Google refuses to disclose much to investors, or why it provides far less information to advertisers than virtually any other online media network. Google does not want anybody to know how it arbs search behavior for increasing returns.

Dirson reports that Keyhole announced last week that it's database covers the entire world in 15 meter resolution. This is not yet integrated into Google Maps, but expect it to be shortly.

Kozoru, a new question answering engine, is talking more openly about its approach to search on its home page. From their first blog entry:

We believe that kozoru is a necessary first step towards the next stage of search technology. Instead of entering keywords into the search bar, you’ll be able to ask a question and get an answer. In fact, kozoru doesn’t understand keywords. We know that might be a little hard to believe, but you can really only ask kozoru questions.

There are some big claims on the site:

After all, how can we do this in less than 9 months when others are still trying to solve this problem after 20 or more years? However, that’s probably the easiest question to answer.

Basically, we’re free to do whatever we want. It may sound odd, but the secret sauce at kozoru is that we aren’t constrained by keywords or neural nets or the traditional academic notions of what A.I. should do.

And I really feel that’s how it is with any disruptive technology. A few key people come together and say, “Why has everybody been doing it this way?” It was that way with the Manhattan Project. It was that way with James Watson. It was that way at PARC.

We’re betting it’s that way with kozoru.

Well, we're waiting to see....

MSN has launched its Toolbar/Desktop Search application today. SEW has a good overview.

When the Mercury News leads with "Google Not Splitting Its Shares Yet" you know there was not much news at the meeting. Other angles included that lunch was served and that there were fewer folks there than anticipated. Chronicle coverage.

Barry and the folks at Rusty Brick have built a search engine relevancy test - essentially its a "blind" engine which gives you results randomly from either Yahoo, Google, Ask, or MSN, then asks you to rate the results (more on the details here). They call it "RustySearch" and Barry just pinged me asking me to get the word out - he needs a larger sampling of searches before he can draw any further conclusions. (His initial results are here.)

Pamela Parker interviews Dick Costolo of Feedburner, who we've worked with at BB and who I talk to frequently for Searchblog. Some interesting tidbits in here.

A happy surprise this week: my book is available for sale up on Amazon, and has been for some time. Its sales rank - at about 409,000, clearly indicates that it's not exactly tearing up the charts, but given that it's not even printed yet and I just found out about this, I suppose that's to be expected. But it's just so....real...to see it there on Amazon, with the cover and everything. Today the final, final manuscript came and I'm spending the next week poring over it, hoping to make it as good as it can possibly be. If you'd like to pre order the book now, why I'd be honored. Here's a link to the order page. Just know that the information about the book is not yet accurate - it will be longer than 288 pages (don't know where they got that, it will be more like 350), for example.

I'm terrified. But thrilled.

UPDATE: Holy crap! You guys pushed it up to like #5400 on Amazon! I guess that's to be expected - start from a small base and work up, but wow. Thank you.

A new vertical search engine plans to launch this Monday, with a twist. Koders.com has the goal of helping programmers find open source code they need to do their job. From the site's "about" page:

A significant portion of application development involves a process of find, copy, paste, and integrate. This process can be greatly accelerated when you can find existing source code that provides a solution to the task at hand.

Koders makes it easy for software developers to find existing source code that solves many common development problems with our vast index of working source code from a variety of open source projects. In many cases you may find code that solves the exact problem you are working on, and in other cases, you can find an 80% solution - where existing code can be suited to your needs with minor modifications.

This is a cool idea, though I have to admit I have no idea if it is an unsolved problem. Plenty of programmers/coders read this site, so let me know if this is the kind of service you might need or want. I do know that as someone who is about to embark on building an open source-based platform, this could certainly prove a valuable resource.

More details from a release I was just sent:

The company currently indexes over 190 million lines of code from more than 28 thousand projects in hundreds of open source repositories that users can search by keyword, language, and license or perform advanced queries using enhanced syntax. Search results are then displayed in a developer-friendly format that makes it easy to understand the code in its original working context.

Koders.com also features a unique Project Cost Calculator that presents a side-by-side analysis of leveraging existing code versus developing it from scratch. Not only does this enable easy assessment of build-versus-buy alternatives, it also provides developers with a quantifiable perspective of their contributions to the open source community.

After a successful campaign for Sun on Slashdot, Feedster is taking the wraps off an RSS ad network. For now, you can sign up, and that's about it. More to come soon, I am sure....

This is the Toolbar that brought Google the Autolink debate. In response, links which are automatically created are now pale blue, so as to differentiate them. The update includes a few other features that WebProNews and SEW say are designed to speed up the application and mollify critics.

If you're into metasearch, check out Dogpile's redesign. MediaPost coverage.

News is here. What is Dodgeball? I dunno, but is seems like Orkut + Mobile done right, I think. More later.

My pals at O'Reilly, and Nat Torkington, the program chair, in particular, have made a 10% discount available to Searchblog readers who might be interested in attending the Where 2.0 Conference later this June in San Francisco. For the discount, hit this link, and use the "wherejbat5" code. I'll be leading the panel discussion on - what else - local search.

From the conference site:

Where 2.0 covers the movement of mapping and location technology from the theoretical to the masses, illustrating the creativity that's waiting to be unleashed as the tools and data become readily available. Sessions and panels will talk to real, deployed products (Google Maps, Yahoo!, MetaCarta, Microsoft) that combine a vision of the future with something to show right now.

That's what this post is claiming.

SFGate notes that Google's Chairman role has been open for 13 months, and raises again the issue of how the company is governed.

"What's Google up to?" is the favorite question of most magazine editors I know. It's also the backstory for a recent spate of querulous posts across the blogosphere.

Fred ponders the role of Google in our world, and Jeff responds. From Fred's post:

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

With respect to Google's position in the dealmaking universe, Fred has this to say (I'd love to know what informed this rant, but I imagine it's first hand experience):

And finally, Google is acting like AOL all of a sudden. You can't do a deal with them without paying respect to their market position. That's fine and is always the case with a market leader, but it will come back to bite them because the deals they won't do will get done with others. And some of those deals are going to be important ones that will create new participants in the market who will grow and become more powerful over time.

From Jeff's post (echoed by Dan Gillmor):

I love Google and what it has done organizing the world's information and valuing links and taking the cooties off of citizens' media and changing the culture. But is it time to start fearing Google (with its caching and its opaque ad policy and its opaque news policy) or mock Google (as Fred does, for reverting to banner ads)? Just asking.

It's hard to be the de factor leader in the tech/media space, and Google is clearly not entirely prepped for the role, at least not yet. But given its success and its stock price, it has no choice. We're expecting the company to act how we want it to act. The problem, of course, is that we all have different expectations, and we all think we're right about what the company should do next.

The only thing a company can do in such a spot, it seems to me, is lead. Lead on issues of policy, transparency, open APIs, IP/DRM, and the like. How to do that? Have a clear and consistent voice and vision about where you think the web is going, and what kind of web you want to see built. That requires a confidence and certainty, characteristics which I sense exist in spades at the company, but have not really come out in a full throated way. There seems to be a lot of reacting going on at this moment - reactions to critics, to competitors, to PR flare ups.

It's scary to lead, to declare where you are going and then head there. It's even scarier to admit that as a leader you've made a mistake. But that's what we expect of our leaders - that they head somewhere, so we can either follow, or plot our next move to outsmart them and take their place. For now, it seems Google is a reluctant leader - it does not want to declare where it's going, or what it's plans are when it gets there. That's causing consternation and second guessing like Fred and Jeff and Dan's posts.

Remember when Bill Gates wrote that silly book (1996)? I thought it was ridiculous - it felt obvious and patronizing to me as a self appointed New Media Guy, but it was a statement that he was willing to be a leader. He was willing to hang it out there, to outline a vision of where he saw his industry going. Most of the world backed him on that book, regardless of the sniping from editors at hip tech magazines.

Would the guys at Google ever do such a thing? Should they?

I sense that many of us wish they would. We long for a clear vision on the idea of the Web OS, for example, or the role of search in media distribution and commerce. Is Google getting into VOIP? Word processing? The cable business? Gaming? Movies? We invent endless fantasies about where Google might end up, then pounce on any possible indications that Google is working on making those fantasies real. It's been fun for a while, but I sense we're all tiring of the guessing game. And I bet nowhere is that game more tiresome than inside the Googleplex itself. What do you think?

Online, of course. From Mediapost's coverage of a Burst study:

Asked about their media consumption habits over the past year, 61 percent of the respondents said they spend more time on the Internet today than a year ago, with 32 percent saying they spend "much more time," and 29 percent claiming to spend "somewhat more time" online.

Also, Fathom reports keyword prices are up 11% in April.

Google Content Blocker. (Yes, it's a joke.)

(Thanks, Scott)

Via ResearchBuzz, a tool that scrapes Google News (and Google News searches) and turns them into an RSS feed. It's called ScrappyGoo, and it's against Google's TOS. My view: change your TOS, Google, or start supporting RSS, er, Atom, er, feeds in a more robust way. This is a cool idea.

(I sense this has been done before, but I can't recall where...)

Just posted, a sure to be interesting thread analyzing a Google patent, with a focus on cracking down on spam in the index. The original link - the article that prompted the Slashdotting - is not responding at the moment, but the address is http://www.wwwcoder.com/main/parentid/285/site/5033/266/default.aspx.
For those who can't wait, someone at Slashdot has posted the article in a comment.

Markoff has the scoop: Yahoo platforms Groxis. Posting will be light as I am traveling today. My prior coverage of Groxis here.

For a company in the midst of a lawsuit with Yahoo over PPC models and sucking wind after its auditor quit under a cloud, this news - a class action claiming the company overpromoted itself and its stock - is just more bad news.

One: Fred is at it again, sharing his AdSense data. This time I think he did in fact violate AdSense TOS. Not in saying AdSense Image ads suck, but in providing click through rates. Hawk comments here.

Two: Google's Web Accelerator is turning into something of a PR nightmare. Some coverage:

Google's Accelerator Breaks Web Apps, Security (ZD)
Google Accelerator: Be Careful Where You Browse (/.)

(also of note, Tristan Louis's thoughts on how GWA is really a stealth search tool for Google)

Three: Google's policy on political ads once is again getting tested. This time it's ads attacking both DeLay and Pelosi. (Mercury News)

And Four: Various reports, including Om's, that Google was down today at around 3.15 pm, and that someone called "SOGO" hijacked google.com.

Spoke with a Google spokesperson just now, who clarified the multiple reports, including mine, about Google's plans in China. Google is opening an office on the mainland, but the office is not an indication of a new operation, she told me. Rather, the company has obtained a license to open a "representative office" - which she described as a place where Google folks can work and hold meetings when they are visiting China. The goal is to spend more time in the country, get to know the local business and political infrastructure, and get smart about options moving forward. As to what those options are, Google had no comment, but did say it was considering a number of them.

The office is in a shared office space set up, the kind of place many businesses lease when they are starting out in a new country (I've done it before in London with The Standard). Apparently the local Hong Kong and Chinese press have had a field day with this story, going so far as to interview a woman who runs the leased office space and claim she was an employee of the company. "Google is committed to learning as much as it can about the local market," the real Google spokesperson told me. But she added that Google has not hired anyone in China. As to reports that Google had retained Victor Koo, she claimed to have no knowledge of that one way or another.

Yippee!

Newsflash from Reuters:

A federal appeals court on Friday vacated a Federal Communications Commission a rule designed to limit people from sending copies of digital television programs over the Internet.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said the FCC had "exceeded the scope of its delegated authority" with the 2003 rule.

The FCC has said copyright protections were needed to help speed the adoption of digital television, which offers higher quality signals.

I just learned that Wayne Rosing has left his role as SVP, Engineering at Google, and plans to focus on a passion of his, astronomy. He's been named senior fellow in mathematical and physical sciences at the University of California, Davis. I've pinged Wayne to see if he'd be game to talk with Searchblog. Wayne will remain as an advisor to Google.

Rosing is going to be working on the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). From the story:

The LSST is intended to look for light from distant galaxies that has been bent by gravity to detect the mysterious dark matter and dark energy thought to make up most of the universe. When completed, possibly by 2012, it will be able to survey the entire visible sky every three nights, taking exposures every 10 seconds. Its three billion-pixel digital camera will generate 30 terabytes of data per night. Plans for the telescope call for all that data to be immediately available to the public.

I can only imagine how - Google Universe Maps, anyone?

As many of you no doubt recall, Searchblog is the target of some pretty determined comment spammers. To defeat them, I reluctantly implemented TypeKey, a comment registration system. But I really prefer allowing folks to comment as they wish to, without registration, and when Scot Hacker, my zen webmaster, suggested an alternative, I decided to go for it. (I have noticed a dropoff in comments since implementing TypeKey, and an increase in emails from readers saying "I'd post this as a comment but....."). Many have very intelligent things to say but wish to remain anonymous, for example, and don't want to go through the process of creating (and remembering) a fake TypeKey account.

Scot explains what we have implemented:

"Our concern is keeping spam out of my inbox and off this blog. The web host's requirement is that the server not be strained by comment spam attacks. We've enabled Brad Choate's excellent SpamLookup [http://bradchoate.com/projects/spamlookup/], a Swiss Army toolbelt of comment and trackback spam tools. We've just enabled SpamLookup's passphrase option. TypeKey logins are no longer required, but you will have to answer a simple question with each comment submission."

So, comment away, but you will have to answer a simple question to do so. If you all like this and it seems to be working, we'll keep it instead of TypeKey. Thanks!

This says it all: " GOOGLE APPARENTLY HOSTS TERROR BLOG THREATENING BUSH AND BLAIR".

As Colin Powell has said: Free speech is intended to protect the controversial and even outrageous word; and not just comforting platitudes too mundane to need protection.

Over at Google Blogoscoped, one of my favorite sites on search, blogger Philipp Lenssen reports that he has been threatened by SEO Inc., a SEO company, for posting widely known facts about the company. He does not have the money to pay for his defense, so he has taken down his original post, which noted that SEO Inc. has apparently been blacklisted from Google's index, at least as it relates to particular terms like "search engine optimization." (In fact, a search in Google for "SEO Inc." does not yield the company's URL in the first set of results, which is certainly odd.)

If Lenssen, who is based in Germany, had the money to fight these bigfoot tactics, he'd certainly win. Instead of fight, he decided to report what has happened, in the hope others will pick up the flag for him. I found his original post, titled "Fall of SEOInc" in Google's Cache. I have a PDF of it as well, should the cache get rinsed in time. From the piece, which, in case the SEOInc. lawyers are reading, I quote under principles of fair use, newsworthiness, and commentary:

It’s kind of ironic that SEOInc.com, a search engine optimization company which for a while was on the Google number 1 spot for the highly competitive query “search engine optimization”, is now nowhere to be found in the Google results. This is likely due to the recent PageRank update and even more algorithm tweaks implemented by Google. Enter “SEOinc” into Google.com, and SEOInc.com is nowhere in the top 10; and the SEOInc.com PageRank has dropped to “none”. Only by entering “site:seoinc.com” into Google will you see the site is still indexed in some way.

And while a low or non-existent Google ranking is bad enough for sites outside the SEO industry, it hits everyone in the SEO business twice as hard: not only are SEOInc not being found with search engines anymore, they’ve also lost their biggest proof their services are worth paying for.

Of course, the fact this site has seen the Google death penalty hints that they’ve overoptimized using “black hat” search engine optimization (such as linkfarms, for example). In either case, these days it pays out more than ever to optimize your content and to deliver valid, accessible HTML, without spending a second thought on what search engines may like. They’re just too flaky to be trusted.

As far as I can tell, Philipp's big crime, according to SEO Inc, was telling the truth. It's no secret that in some significant way, SEO Inc, which claims on its home page that it can "rank more sites in more top positions than anyone in the business," has been banned from Google. It's the title of a thread in Webmasterworld, for example.

Philipp has posted a copy of the threatening letter SEO Inc. sent him here. My two cents: The cat is out of the bag, SEO Inc. Bigfoot letters can't change the truth.

Funny aside from SEO Inc's own site (at least last time I checked):

"Want proof? Take the Search Engine Optimization Inc challenge. Go
to Google and search for the term "search engine optimization" or
"search engine placement"! You are going to learn the same technology
and techniques that get us ranked!"

Not any more....

Mo media, mo content. From the WSJ (sub):

Yahoo hired Patrick Houston, 51 years old, away from Cnet Networks Inc., where he was editor-in-chief of Cnet.com, a site that publishes reviews of computers, cellphones and videogames.

Mr. Houston will lead Yahoo's initiative to expand its technology content as part of a newly created position, said a spokesman for the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company. The expansion could include introducing original Yahoo content on the technology site, he said. Yahoo's tech site currently aggregates news and product reviews from other sources.

I've been watching this issue for a while - nothing tests a corporate maxim such as "Don't Be Evil" as the China Question. From Paid Content we learn that Google has been granted the right to open an office in mainland China. From the source, Interfax China:

Chinese authorities have green-lighted Google's plans to open the company's first office in Mainland China, which will allow the world's largest search engine to further localize its operations, but will also significantly intensify competition in China's online search market, analysts said.

"Google has been granted approval to open an office in China, but has not hired any staff in China yet," a Google source told Interfax. "Google has also started operations of www.google.com.cn."

Although Google has operated a Chinese language search engine since September of 2000, the company had previously been forced to run its China business out of an office in Hong Kong, which hindered its ability to market advertising services via its search engine to Mainland Chinese companies. Google's businesses in China have mainly been limited to self-help advertising services such as Google AdWords and Google AdSense.

The article goes on to claim that Google has hired Victor Koo, former COO of Sohu, to head up its mainland offices. So far the only other mention I have found of this is the SF Chronicle, which ran a brief and got a "no comment" from Google.

Now, Google has not exactly crowed about these moves to me or any other press folk, and it's entirely possible this report is inaccurate. But I don't think it is. I have a ping into Google PR to find out more.

I saw down with Sergey in February to discuss the China question, and I found his remarks cautious and considered. I report them in the book, but given that this is breaking now, I thought you might enjoy a bit of a preview. A few tidbits from the text:

“China is a curious hybrid, a miscegenation of Leninist institutions and political structures imported and established in the 50s during the Stalin era and a more recent importation of dynamic market structures and values,” said Orville Schell, a China scholar and Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California Berkeley. “There has been great economic reform since the Maoist era, but much less political reform.”

China represents a great paradox for a democratic business culture – its political culture is repugnant, but its market is far too rich to ignore. “As businesses contemplate entering the China market and begin their processes of due-diligence, most of them have actually already made up their minds: They cannot but be in China,” Schell noted.
....

Google has not yet made this decision, at least not publicly.

For years, Google has provided millions of Chinese citizens its service in the Chinese language, but it has yet to launch an official presence in China. That means that so far, the company has not had to play by Chinese rules when it comes to censorship of its main index. It also means that for the most part, Google has been left out of China’s recent economic boom.

The text goes on to note the China/Google News tempest, earlier Chinese efforts to filter Google, and Google's investment in Baidu, which will be its main competition, presuming it launches in China. I also note that Yahoo and others have already gone to China. But then again, they do not have such a high bar - their mottos are free of subjective statements regarding evil.

With all that in mind, I spoke with Sergey.

“We look at China with a different point of view,” Brin told me during the internationalist World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in early 2005. “A lot of companies would say ‘It’s a big market, how do we get a chunk of it.’ We want to focus on how do we do the most good.”

On the one hand, Brin said, not having Google at all would be a disservice to all Chinese users. On the other hand, a censored service does run counter to his sensibilities. “You have to weigh the odds. Corporations need to be responsible. If we wrote (the Chinese laws) then I would say we were responsible for them.”

But what of people who feel that Google is failing their expectations by not standing up to China? “I am sure at various times, various people will say that we failed their expecatations,” Brin said. “I think its a good motivation to have, and I am sure we will not be perfect to everyone at all times.”

Schell, who was my Dean at Berkeley, has some final thoughts on all of this:

“What may be most important is not the single concessionary act to China, but the precedent that this act would set for Google, namely, that the level of censorship before entry in specific markets will be negotiated on a case by case basis,” Schell concludes. “If China manages to ring out such concessions, why should not another country or even some large multi-national corporation which does not like unflattering information about it flying around the Google search universe, complain - and expect concessions?”(7)

As far as I can tell, Google is still struggling to figure out how to answer its own version of the China question. But this latest news seems to imply that a decision is certainly imminent.

An updated Yahoo Video Search launches "GA" (general availability) tonight with more video content (if that sounds familiar, you were reading earlier in the week when Google added more content as well). Feeds include Buena Vista, CBS, Discovery Channel, MTV, Reuters, Scripps Networks (Home & Garden Television, The Food Network), VH1 and "Stupid Videos," the name of which I just could not resist mentioning and linking to.

I have a new thought on the whole Google OS meme. Basically, we should move on - in many ways, it's already happened. Recall Google's mission - to organize the world's information and make it accessible? Well, that's pretty much the same mission as Microsoft had for the PC, when you think about it. The big difference was that to execute on its mission, MSFT had to build the OS. But Google just has to leverage the web. In other words, Google's mission requires a Web OS (I know some of you hate that phrase, but it works for me), whether they build it or not. It's a platform that must exist if their services are going to be useful.

And, ideally, that platform is responsive, which means fast. So, what to do when broadband feels less than speedy? Why, leverage your massive infrastructure and nifty algorithms to speed it up, of course. Hence the Google Web Accelerator, launched today. Once again, we Mac folks are left out, but if you're on Windows, you're in luck. SEW has a nice overview, from it:

GWA works to speed up the surfing process for all web sites NOT only Google by a combination of:

+ Prefetching material
In part, determined by an algorithm developed at Google that looks at
mouse movements and aggregate traffic to sites to try to determine what to prefetch
+ Caching of pages on Google's own servers
They will also try to determine how frequently material is updated and continuously have the latest copy available on their servers. Mayer said that GWA and Google's new search history product are completely independent of one another.
+ Parallel downloading
Download multiple parts of the page (images for example) at the same
time.
+ Differential fetching
Instead of downloading the entire page, GWA will try send only what
might have changed on the page
+ Compression
Mayer added however that GWA tries not to change the quality of images and other material

This is a cool idea - speed up the web by leveraging your own platform, which was, of course, built by search. When you download and use GWA, you don't have to create a Google account - which I find odd, honestly, as this is a perfect excuse to tie customers more closely to Google. However, you do start to run all your web surfing habits over Google's servers, and that, of course, makes Google something of a proxy ISP, with access to all the aggregate data that an ISP like AOL or Comcast has on you. Is that a good thing? Well, yes and no. But net net, it has implications down the road. Very soon, Google will know an awful lot about the world's surfing habits, well beyond search. Hmmm.

Update: Over at 37 Signals, signs that the GWA ain't such a nice net citizen.

Time Warner plans sold $925 million of Google shares last quarter. What to buy?

Now this ain't news to those of you who've complained to me, but it's news to many who presume Google does just about everything right. Net net: Google does not take very good care of its advertisers. Give it time, it will.

I'm a very proud Band Manager today: Boing Boing won another Webby this year, in fact, it won two - both the Webby award (decided by judges), as well as the People's Voice, which was decided by a popular vote. Way to go, gang!

Noted: Google won a number of them as well, in various categories, including Best Practices.

Over at the WSJ (free link) Lee Gomes notes how spam clogs up SERPs, and then realizes that the major engines are to blame for it:

...a kind of schizophrenia exists at search-engine companies. Half their engineering staff is busy trying to keep useless pages out of search results; the other half is busy coming up with tools that make it easier for people to create and profit from the useless pages in the first place.

He's right, of course. We all have seen the crap that lards up results, pretending to be "services" of one sort or another. Is it spam? Well, it's clearly affiliate- and AdSense-driven sludge. At best, it's gray. But it's funny, lately I have to say that the big guys are doing a pretty good job of trimming this stuff out of their results. Gomes notes that he found these sites while looking for home repair information.

In setting about on these projects, I naturally planned to use the Web as a resource to not only bone up on topics like roof repair, but also to find experienced and honest local trades people to hire. How lucky we are, thought I, to be able to do spring cleaning in the age of broadband.

What I actually found online was a different story. No matter what I searched for, I ended up with a distressingly large percentage of what might be called second-generation Web spam.

In fact, I've been doing the same kind of searches, and on Google anyway, I've found that the index is surprising clear of spam for searches like "roof repair," "new deck," and "window replacement." I found pretty good results on Yahoo for these terms as well.

Hat Tip: Andy.

A wise source recently observed to me that to comprehend the health of the big guys, watch how the smaller ones are doing. On that measure, things are not so rosy in search land. Looksmart, Findwhat, Mamma.com, all are trending down on poor results. Why, in an age of ever expanding search and online advertising dollars, why is this happening? Could it be that they are failing to retain traffic of good intent? One might expect that even the second tier search networks are doing well. But they are not. Hmmmm.
.

Recently public FastClick (FSTC) has been best known as a traditional ad network, but yesterday it launched text ads a la Adsense. It's always good to see competition continue to sprout, even as the leaders consolidate their power. From MediaPost's coverage:

Fastclick's entry into contextual search advertising and its initial public offering announced last month are directly related, analysts speculated. "Investors are now going to look to Fastclick to make sure they have a full quiver of arrows," said Gary Stein, a Jupiter Research analyst. "It's important that any company can round out all of their capabilities."

News to me....it's driven by search, and rather interesting in that it does not try to be all things...allows you to filter by date and time, title, source, and general keyword search. Rather cool, I have to say, on first glance.

As of today, Google has added 12 additional channels including Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Travel Channel, Discovery Health Channel, and CNN.

New Scientist digs up some older news-related patents from Google and surmises that changes are coming to the service. Beal comments that the patent may well favor mainstream media.

A Slashdotter and recent UMich engeineering grad records Larry Page's commencement speech at UMich. From the thread:

"(He spoke on) topics ranging from dropping out of Stanford to start Google to "Thinking Big" and the abundance of venture capital to traveling to Mars, curing world hunger, and well, much much more."

Federal Computer Week notes that federal agencies are wary of desktop search tools because of the potential for "third parties" to gain access to critical files.

Andrews said two main problems plague all desktop search appliances. If security is breached, either by an intruder using an unattended machine or by theft of a desktop or laptop computer, prowlers can find sensitive information faster.

Employees of law enforcement agencies, the FDA and other regulatory bodies can easily expose confidential investigations. The second concern is that when employees use free software, agency officials cannot control the applications as much as they control enterprisewide deployments. ...

...He also questioned privacy ramifications of desktop search tools that reveal information to third parties. The free programs are supported by advertisers on Web pages.

Andrews raised other significant concerns about agency officials’ adoption of free software, because government interests may not be aligned with the interests of corporations that offer the free resources.