John Battelle's Searchblog

Today's Journal runs a piece on Google and the content biz. It's behind the wall, but some good stuff:

... the farther Google ventures beyond the Web, the tougher the road gets -- as its dealings with some big TV companies show....

...Google "didn't show proper respect for us as potential partners," says Larry Kramer, president of digital media at CBS. "We're not just going to give this away for free."...

... there are growing signs that Google is finished with the easy stuff. Its attempts to search other information -- starting with books, TV and scholarly works -- promise to be more costly and time-consuming than the simple Web searches that propelled its first years of growth....

...Google's video-search quest is moving it toward possible competition with the cable-TV industry....

... Google surprised some broadcasters by telling them it was already building a digital database of their programs.... Rick Cotton, general counsel at General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal, says Google's "stunning approach" brought talks to a halt. "This is not the way one normally does business whether you're an old company or a young one," he says.

...Google's chief executive, Mr. Schmidt, calls Google's mission a long-term one. "It will take, current estimate, 300 years to organize all of the world's information," he says.

Thanks to reader Scott Kidder.

AOL has launched a beta of their new video search (they've had it for a while, this is the improved version). SEW has the details.

AOL also has a video player, like Google, as well as cool features like playlists, previews, and various ranking levers.

Another click fraud related lawsuit, this one filed by Click Defense. Gary has made the complaint available here.

Now playing on Google: Matrix Revolutions. (Thanks, anonymous reader!)

One of the most oft-asked questions in search is "what's next." Yahoo hopes that My Web 2.0 is an answer - according to the folks who created it, My Web is an entirely new approach to relevance based on social inputs such as your group, your search history, and your own personally tagged webspace (which I've been calling the PersonalWeb for sometime).

Yahoo has dubbed the secret sauce driving relevance in My Web "MyRank," and it seems to be Yahoo first truly focused effort to steal some of Google's PageRank mojo.

But back to that "what's next" question. In my upcoming book, which I swear will feel about a decade out of date by the time it finally f*cking gets here, I write this:

Search is no longer a stand-alone application, a useful but impersonal tool for finding something on a new medium called the world wide web. Increasingly, search is our mechanism for how we understand ourselves, our world, and our place within it. It’s how we navigate the one infinite resource that drives human culture: knowledge.

I think Yahoo's been smoking the same stuff as me, because My Web 2.0 feels an awful lot like using search as the spade by which we turn the soil of knowledge. It's clearly a major step along Yahoo's calls its FUSE strategy - for Find Use Share and Expand.

So what is it? Well, I'm on my way to the Where 2.0 conference (already late) where I'm moderating a panel on local search, so I'll let the NYT do the talking:

My Web 2.0, a new version of the company's search engine that will harness the collective power of small groups of Web surfers to improve the quality of search results.

The service, which the company's executives refer to as a "social search engine," is based on a new page-ranking technology that Yahoo has named MyRank. Rather than relying on which pages are linked to most frequently on the Web - the so-called Page Rank technology pioneered by Google - MyRank organizes pages based on how closely search users are related to one another in their social network and on their reputation for turning up helpful information.

My Web 2.0 allows Web pages found useful by one member of a group to be instantly accessible to a network of trusted associates and to their network contacts as well. The service, Yahoo executives hope, will combat the growing problem of search-engine manipulation by using a collection of human eyes and minds to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Here's Yahoo's take, from the Yahoo Search Blog:

To address [the] limits of today's search experience, we are releasing an early beta version of My Web 2.0 for a limited number of users. It is a new kind of search engine – a social search engine – that complements web search by enabling users to search the knowledge and expertise of their friends and community in addition to the web.

Yahoo is making My Web 2.0 available to Flickr users first, and that makes a lot of sense, as that community already has a lot of "web 2.0" habits in place. But I expect it will roll out to all pretty quickly.

The key thing here, I think, is that this is a major test of the usefulness of social networks. So far, they've not really been very useful beyond popularity contests and getting laid, but perhaps when combined with knowledge and sharing, something new can happen. In essence, if this works right, you can search the knowledge of your friends, and leave your own clickstream as breadcrumbs for others to find. It's Bush's Memex, writ large, and it's also a potentially robust development platform for all sorts of new kinds of applications. A key factor will be the ability to integrate other data repositories, and I know Yahoo is working on that (you can already integrate delicious and flickr, for example...)

But, on the other hand, it's a pain in the ass to keep creating social networks, maintaining groups, tagging, sharing, etc. It's a habit I'm not sure the masses will ever get into, at least in a way that is driven by pure selflessness. Jeff Weiner, SVP of search at Yahoo, knows this, and he speaks of incentives which will develop to encourage folks to tag and share. One such incentive is social standing - "I'm well known for being a connector of knowledge," for example. Another is economic - "I connect knowledge, and there's a business in that." And there is a business in that, to be sure - it's what blogs do, after all.

What is potentially exciting about all this is the ability for bottom up domain specific search to get built. Imagine a Globalspec built by a community of users who are all sharing their searches across My Web. Then imagine they realize what they've built, and decide to make a business of it. I am quite sure Yahoo will be right there, helping them figure that out, and folding those domain specific realms of knowledge into their broader index. Weiner says his roadmap for where My Web is going is one of the deepest ever created at Yahoo. I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes from here.

Cool, but....I'm still waiting for a reliable recommendation service for podcasting. What do you guys use? This version of Blinkx also searches videologs....

SEW coverage.

According to Techdirt, the same fellow who hacked the DVD encryption - DVD Jon - has hacked the Google video player, just as we predicted. Now it plays on any site.

Update: Sure, I guess you can say it's not a hack if it's an open source tool, but then again, this response from Google - sent to me by Google PR - sure makes it feel like a hack:

"This modification of Google's open source video viewer does not compromise
the integrity and security of content available from Google Video in any
way. We strongly advise Google Video users to not download this modification
because it could result in security vulnerabilities on their computer and
may disrupt their computer's ability to access Google Video."

In other words, "Don't worry, publishers, you're cool....but if you are a user, worry...."

From Rajat's blog via Blogoscoped:

I installed the Greasemonkey Gmail Delete button and now Google has locked me out of my Gmail account for "between one minute and 24 hours". I'm surprised - use Greasemonkey and Google whacks you. Oh mighty and benevolent Google, can I have my freakin' email back?

Update: let back in after an hour.

Check it out.

I'll have thoughts on this later, but for now, know that MyWeb 2.0 is live. This is a major push from Yahoo in the realm of social search. It's somewhat complicated to explain, which is an issue, but the implications are important. More soon.

Google is rolling out a new version of personal search today, one based on your search history rather than the rather anemic approach it previously took. More soon, but for an overview, head to SEW.

It's official, Google Earth is here. Google calls it "A 3D interface to the planet." Now tell me that search isn't the new GUI.... you have to download an app, but it integrates all manner of stuff. Except, of course, the Mac.

Release in extended entry. From it:

Key features of Google Earth include:
· Free software download available at http://earth.google.com
· 3D buildings in major cities across the United States
· 3D terrain showing mountains, valleys, and canyons around the world
· Integrated Google Local search to find local information such as
hotels, restaurants, schools, parks, and transportation
· Fast, dynamic navigation
· Video playback of driving directions
· Tilt, rotate, and activate 3D terrain and buildings for a different
perspective on a location
· Easy creation and sharing of annotations among users

Update: Google Earth is at capacity....as Andy notes...

Continue reading "Google Earth Officially Launches" »

Three decisions today. You've heard about em already, I'm guessing. Grokster - a kick in the head, but at least they sent it back for full trial, as opposed to outlawing P2P entirely. The right of our culture to know things which otherwise may not be known, thanks to the institution of the anonymous source - not struck down, but not clarified, either: the Court punted. And lastly, the kick to the ribs: Cable companies do not have to share their monopoly networks. However, I consider this a boon - to new approaches to infrastructure and distribution, ie, Google and Yahoo, muni wifi and wimax. Let's hope they don't f*ck it up with walled gardens and paternal business models.

Wall Street likey the video play.

BTW, interesting Slashdot comment - this fellow claims Google contacted his company asking him to upload commercial video. But he found Google's approach maddening. Thread here. From it:

Me: How are you going to protect copyrighted material from being copied?
Google: We're working on that.

Me: In a fee-based scenario, what "cut" does Google want?
Google: We haven't decided.

Me: What if I upload free content and a LOT of people like/view it? How does Google make money?
Google: We reserve the right to charge the uploader if the content becomes "very popular."

Me: Define "very popular".
Google: We don't know yet.

Me: Why should I upload content if you can't answer these basic questions?
Google: You just should.

Update: Rivlin has a story on it, quotes some guy named Battelle...

I've confirmed that Monday Google will launch an in-browser video playback feature based on the open source VLC media player. This is the logical next step for Google's video search and upload function, which began taking uploads from anyone who cared to submit back in April.

Google will not disclose the raw numbers of videos that have been uploaded to date, but the company will make all those which were tagged as "free" available for real time streaming through the VLC player, which Google has modified and will make available for download Monday morning. The company also intends to make its VLC code available to the open source community as part of their Google code project.

The video will be searchable via the meta data provided by the submission process (no, there's no PageRank for video, yet).

Now, before we start discussing how this represents the Death of Comcast/The Networks/Windows Media Player et al, this is not quite that, but it is the start of something big. For one, it's clear this will be integrated with the Google payment program which was revealed to be in process last week. Plenty of folks uploaded video to Google with a payment option, and that has yet to roll out, but you can expect that it will.

Secondly, this is a big deal for many institutions which do not have the ability to host and stream their own video, but would very much like to get their message out. In essence, Google is providing their infrastructure free of charge to let anyone upload video and have it be found. That's a very big deal in and of itself.

Third, this is clearly a shot across Microsoft's bow. The Windows Media Player is a standalone application, rife with its own DRM and entanglements with Hollywood. Many once claimed IE would never fall, but Firefox has shown what the open source community can do with some good code and the support of a dedicated user base. I'm pretty sure that once Google's VLC implementation is stared at by enough folks, a stand alone player with hooks into Google Video search and many others will not be far behind.

Fourth, this will help the spread of an alternative universe for video distribution and playback, one independent of the walled garden business model in which video is currently locked. I've ranted on this before, but I do believe that the sooner independent voices have an outlet for their work, and a business model to pay for it, the sooner we'll see content creators revolt from the hegemony of cable and studio models (and perhaps we can finally begin to have a cut and paste video culture....)

More on this as it develops...

Update: I neglected to mention that all the video in the "free" category has been "human scanned" for adult content and copyright violations, I'm told by a good source.

I'm excited to go be part of my first Gnomedex today, but bummed I can't stay for very long. I am quite sure there'll be plenty of coverage in the b'sphere, as the conference is built on "unlimited wifi and power strips."

Expect some announcements from Microsoft, a major sponsor, around RSS support. Winer has a preview here. Watch Scoble for more.

I caught up with Louis in email, and got a chance to ask him a few questions. Here's the interview:

Why did you leave eBay?
It's been four years, during which I have done many things for eBay. For example my new search engine has been kicking butt for about two years; it's perfectly adapted to eBay's needs and is in the same league as Google in query volume. In return eBay gave me a fancy Fellow title and a corner conference room. I got to play with all sorts of large problems and see the solutions used by millions of people, exactly what I like to do. So I'm leaving in great terms.

The main reason for me to leave is that eBay does not absorb innovation at the pace I enjoy, and its focus is narrower than Google. So rather than chewing on variations of e-commerce for the next few years, I'm very tempted to play with radically new stuff: satellites images, machine translation, ways to extract knowledge from giant bodies of data ... who knows what else? And frankly, I'm dying to peek under the hood and see the infrastructure they have created. For someone like me, it's the ultimate Christmas toy.

By "your new search engine" I assume you mean the internal search at eBay, right? Can you tell us a bit more about that?

Sure. We replaced the search back-end a couple of years ago with home-grown code, and it has been performing very well. The only user-visible difference is that any change (price, new item, ended item,...) is reflected in the search and browse pages in real time. So it was not a traumatic user-interface change, just a better back-end.

Did Google recruit you?
I have known Larry and Sergei forever, I want to believe that I had a standing invitation. All it took was one email to Larry.

What might you be doing at Google? Will you be working on ecommerce?
The agenda is "Whatever I want", which is really attractive. I honestly don't know because I need to check what is going on, all the projects, the strategy, and the infrastructure. I have been working on search for e-commerce for several years now, so a change would be welcome. The Froogle rumors are a bit hasty given that I have not made up my mind, and I won't for a few weeks. Someone must have connected the dots in the obvious manner, but I am tempted by more exotic stuff. We'll see.

Really, no remit at all? No expectations? Who are you reporting to?
Nope, and again, this is a big part of the attraction. I don't know who I am reporting to. I think I need to pick my boss as well as what I want to do. How can you say no to this? :)

What are you most interested in right now in the field of search?
Just to be clear, I think that Google has plenty of search experts, so I may actually never touch search. But since I have the mike in hand, what I find the most interesting problem in search is to think of it as a dialog rather than a one-shot thing: enter query, get ten links back. The search engine needs to do its part to keep the dialog going. That's what I said at Web 2.0 last year.

What problems are the most interesting?
I'm fascinated by the many ways we can extract real knowledge from billions of tidbits, whether they'd be Web pages, queries, links, reviews, social networks... We have a few tools today, mostly statistics to isolate repeating data from the noise, but I think we will eventually go much further. What we need are generic pattern recognition engines. It ties into what Jeff Hawkins is talking about on the structure of the neocortex.

Does this mean you have to give up your "ALTVSTA" license plates on your car?
Nope, I'm too proud of this baby. Remember, AltaVista was a huge technical success, for which I take some credit, and a business disaster for reasons over which I had no control. Being stuck inside a dinosaur in a death spiral (Digital) never helped. The portal strategy of the barbarians from Houston (Compaq) and the lack of focus on core search made sure that any remaining value was destroyed. Google was simply a better tool that filled up the space, more power to it!

This is a fascinating "open letter" from a blogger who covers the porn industry, asking Google to embrace his industry, especially given its dependance on payment systems just like the one Google is working on. The conclusions are quite interesting.

Banking is a perennial thorn in the side of even the largest and most successful adult websites. All adult companies are overcharged by merchant banks poorly equipped to deal with transactions they consider to be ‘high-risk’.

Before PayPal withdrew from offering billing services to adult companies (around the time they were acquired by eBay), they were the preferred customer choice for the websites that offered them as a payment option.

It’s hard to justify PayPal’s withdrawl on ‘moral’ grounds given the volume of pornography sold via eBay.

Conclusion: Google is already in the porn business and it would be damaging to withdraw.

Conclusion: PayPal have banned ‘high-risk’ transactions due to a lack of technical expertise. Google can satisfy a waiting billion dollar market by catering to adult transactions.

Conclusion: Taking adult transactions will give Google the ‘adult edge’ that VHS used to overtake Betamax. PayPal’s neglect is Google's opportunity.

Update: The ever inquisitive Gary finds that Google already owns "GooglePorn.com" and some others..

PaidContent has a summary of how Yahoo is looking at behavioral targeting in its quest to compete with AdSense.

MarketingVox reminds us that Usama Fayyad, the founder of digiMine and co-founder of Revenue Science, joined Yahoo late last year as chief data officer.

He's been there for months, but he's finally starting to use Yahoo search. Interesting writeup, and also, he notes Twingine, a Google/Yahoo comparison engine.

Dense, but interesting stuff. Tristan looks at the incoming links for the Technorati 100 at Google versus Yahoo. I wonder what Sifry, Jeremy, or the folks at Blogger have to say about this? Some of Tristan's conclusions:

# Yahoo! generally does a better job at indexing the blogosphere than Google does. We know they have been working hard to improve their index and here's proof that they are getting results
# Even if Google is the one with the motto about not doing evil, Yahoo! seems to be the one interested in giving equal opportunity to the little guy: smaller blogs seem to have a better chance of being recognized by Yahoo! than they do of being recognized by Google
# While the front page of Google advertises they are currently indexing over 8 billion pages, it is very difficult to find ways to support that claim via the link feature they are offering: this can be seen as confirmation that Google does not tell you about all the links it has in its index.

Danny gives his analysis here.

Update: Sifry has his take here.

A reader points me to Ambedo, which is sort of like YubNub meets A9 meets metasearch.

Om Mailk has sources who say yes. This would be quite a return for Monier, the founder of Alta Vista, and another blow to eBay, where Monier has worked the past few years.

Update: I have confirmed this move with Louis, he starts next week. I hope to have more soon.

Nice meditation on the role photo sites and tagging might have on the future of image search.

One of the powerful aspects of owning a top photo sharing site is the possibility to own image search in the future. Microsoft, Google, Ask Jeeves and Yahoo! all have extremely mediocre image search.

Search for a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge on Google image search and see what you get -- super mediocre images of a great photographic subject. By owning an online photo sharing site Microsoft could use user online ranking data to prioritize image search and make MSN image search the clear leader. Although image search is a much smaller subset than text search it would be a powerful toehold in the Google dominated world.

Although I have not seen this type of thing appear at Yahoo! yet (and with the strong grass roots community spirit at Flickr you'd probably need user buy in and even a possible opt in approach) I suspect you may see it in the future. Yahoo! has a huge leg up owning Flickr.

I have been remiss, due to travel, in not mentioning that MSN has launched a new local search function. Mediapost has the scoop.

I recently sent a note to the folks at Google PR. It went something like this:

So, in the last week, it's been

1. Google is starting a Paypal killer.
2. Google is starting a craigslist killer.
3. Google is starting an iTunes killer.

So, any thoughts about all of this?

Steve Langdon, who works with Google PR, got back to me yesterday. He sent me comments from Eric Schmidt regarding the PayPal rumours. They go as follows:

"We do not intend to offer a person-to-person stored-value payments system."

"We believe that ecommerce can be improved and we are working on ways to improve the user experience. We are working on things in ecommerce."

"The payment services we are working on are a natural evolution of Google’s existing online products and advertising programs which today connect millions of consumers and advertisers."

"We are building products in the area to solve new problems in ecommerce."

These sound a lot like "We are not planning to introduce a browser" comments. In other words, why do what's already been done, when we can do better!?

As for the craigslist and itunes whisperings, Steve had this to say: "rumor and speculation."

I'm at the WebmasterWorld Search conference today, so posting will be light.

Just a quick note: We're doing the Web 2.0 conference by (loose) invitation, just as we did last year. We sent out a bunch of invites today, but as always, emails get lost, or they change from what we have on our list, or I missed folks I should have invited. If you'd like to come, please just head to the site and let us know. Say you came from Searchblog and I'll make sure that an invitation gets sent your way. See you in SF!

Stefanie breaks it down here.

"I do believe that Google will hit a wall eventually, and it will hit it spectacularly," said the book author Moore. "The real question is: What will it do then?"

Safa Rashtchy released a note today (PDF only, no link) saying his sources are confirming the Journal's story, and reminding us that he earlier noted that Google may launch a listings service as well.

• We had noted earlier this year that we believe Google is likely to introduce both a listings product (similar to "Craigslist" but much more powerful) and a C2C/B2C transaction and payment platform. If Google Wallet indeed launches this year, it will be initially aimed as an additional service to over 200,000 Google merchants, many of whom also use eBay.

• Google will of course be facing significant hurdles to compete with the well-established PayPal, which has more than 72M users. However, we note that when Google entered the paid listing business, it also had to catch up with a much more established Overture, which it eventually replaced as the number one provider of paid search listings.

The other revenue shoe drops. Not confirmed, but...this from the Online Journal.

Google Inc. this year plans to offer an electronic-payment service that could help the Internet-search company diversify its revenue and may heighten competition with eBay Inc.'s PayPal unit, according to people familiar with the matter.

Exact details of the search company's planned service are not known. But the knowledgeable people say it could have similarities with PayPal, which allows consumers to pay for purchases on Web sites by funding electronic-payment accounts from their credit cards or checking accounts. Some consumers like PayPal for the security it offers, since it allows them to share their banking or credit-card numbers only with PayPal without having to divulge the information to merchants.

Spokespeople for Google and PayPal declined to comment.

More on this later, but...if you want to think about it, read this

essay from Paul Ford.

Update: Gary has found the "Google Payment Company," which Google filed paperwork for in CA.
More: Carl Bialik of the Journal kindly offers this free link to the Journal story.

Ah, it's Friday. Travel day for me, left Laguna and Safa's excellent conference this morning. Over the three days we heard from an interesting mix of international CEOs (Tom Online, Hurray!!, Daum), and a lot of search/ecommerce (Marchex, WebSideStory, Overstock, Indeed). Safa did not do the typical investor conference, where CEOs just present company Powerpoints, he really drew folks out into conversations. I enjoyed it a lot. The highlight for me was last night, when I joined a panel with Steve Jurvetson and Jerry Yang, quite an honor. Jurvetson invested in Baidu, HotMail, Skype, and many, many other successful companies, and it was fun to hear his thoughts on Yahoo, MSFT, Google et al. Jerry was his usual understated self. Over and over he said "We can't presume (insert competitor here) will stumble, we have to assume they will succeed." He said he keeps working because the thinks the competition is getting really strong, and he wants to continue to help guide Yahoo through this phase of the battle.

Steve pointed out that it was going to one hell of a battle, that in fact MSFT was girding for a company wide holy war, one that he thinks they must win. Now it gets interesting....

A company that was much discussed during the week was MySpace, which is owned by Intermix Media. The CEO presented there, and the stock shot up during the week. That might have something to do with the fact that the company settled (without admitting wrongdoing) an adware/spyware case based on practices it claims it has since abandoned, but also, there were an awful lot of investors in that conference room, and on the second night Safa had a really interesting and entertaining panel of teenagers who told us how they use media (I asked him if we could steal the idea for Web 2.0, and he gave his consent....). All of them used MySpace, it was pretty much a clean sweep. None of them used anything else for social networking and the like. I think the investors were taking notes....it felt like ICQ all over again.

Lots going on this week over at FM, for those Searchbloggers who are interested...

I've been pointed twice in one week to YubNub, which bills itself as a "(social) command line for the web."

YubNub is the result of a "program like hell for 24 hours" project, in fact, it came out of one guy's attempt to win a contest around the new Ruby on Rails framework.

The idea of search as the command line for the web is well established, this takes the idea one step (or more) further, letting you set up commands in the search line itself. You can use the search line as a single point of reference for searching just about any web resource, and you can add your own, if you're geeky enough (others will do it for you if you're challenged like I am). From the post explaining YubNub:

I was tired of setting up the same Firefox keywords on each of the 5 computers that I use. By putting my keywords into YubNub, I can hit "am mark twain" for an Amazon search, or "gmap vancouver" for a Google Maps search, no matter which computer I'm on.

But on a bigger scale, YubNub is the realization of a very big idea: the URL command line of the web OS.

Web applications were once considered slow and unreliable, compared to their desktop counterparts. But these days, people are increasingly choosing web applications over desktop applications. Amazingly, GMail is found to be faster than desktop email programs. The snappy Google Maps interface feels as responsive as a desktop application. The web is morphing into the desktop, and today we are witness to the command line making its appearance in this new world, as YubNub, the (social) command-line for the web.

The beauty of YubNub is that anyone can help to extend it. If there is an existing web service with a submit form, they can add it pretty easily (like I did with the Amazon example above). But even more interesting is the adding of complex data-processing services (like validating an RSS feed, or converting webpages to audio using text-to-speech).

Very Web 2.0.

Wired News throws another log on the click fraud fire here. This is the story of BlowSearch, a meta search engine which has discovered that click fraud is rampant and is creating a tool to deal with it.

Let's pull back to 50,000 feet here for a second. Advertisers and SEMs are saying that clickfraud, in aggregate, accounts for 15-20% of all spending (I had two major agencies confirm this figure to me again this week). Why do they say this? Because they are on the front lines and see the non-performing clicks, the domain parking lots filled with AdSense ads, the odd patterns of clicks in the middle of the night from what have to be robots or armies of third-world paid-to-clickers. It's hard to substantiate these claims, but let's think about this for a minute: 20%! That's more than a billion dollars in fraud in an industry growing faster than anything else in the media business.

Now, it's in the advertisers' best interest to claim this kind of fraud, for the more they can say some clicks are fraudulent, the more refunds they get from Google et al, and the higher their "real" conversion rates are. So, caveat number one, take advertisers claims with a grain of salt.

Now, on the other end of the spectrum, folks at both Yahoo and Google have sworn up and down to me that click fraud is not a very big deal, that the level of fraud is, by their estimation, in the low single digits. Why would they say this? Why, because they see everything, of course, and are deeply motivated to not only find fraud, but to ferret it out. After all, if their networks are seen as scamming the advertiser, everyone loses.

Except, let's examine the motivations on this side of the equation. Clearly, it's in the engines' best interests to say that clickfraud is not a major issue, and that they have it under control. It's also in their best interests, at least in the short term, to allow a bit of fraud to happen. After all, it's just a tax on what is still an incredibly efficient method of marketing. Clearly advertisers are not stopping their spending because of what they see as 20% clickfraud. Search marketing is so efficient that a 20% "clickfraud markup" is justified in the advertiser mind. The market will bear it, so why not let it happen?

The truth is probably, as always, somewhere in the middle. There is probably more fraud happening than the engines will admit, or find, and less than the advertisers claim. But it's maddening that we don't have a way of knowing for sure, because Google and Yahoo will not engage with the advertisers in a high level dialogue of trust, one where the two sides can compare notes. I hope that changes soon.

UDPATE: After some feedback, I've realized that my post may have led some to think that I believe that the major engines are in fact actively allowing fraud to occur. I don't think that is the case. In fact, it's in their long term interest to eradicate it, which is why I think it'd be great if they worked with major agencies/advertisers to combat it in a unified fashion. I sense that for every ten smart engineers Yahoo and Google have working on detecting and beating click fraud, there are 10,000 folks trying to game the system. Unless both advertisers and engines work together in a trusting relationship to compare notes and figure out how to fix this, the Force Of Many will outpace the engine's best efforts (and the advertisers will always claim that there is more fraud than the engine's claim there is).

I've been on about this for a long time, how Yahoo and Google can and should be the distributor of choice for the publishing industry, if the publishers can only get out of their own way with regards to their old business models. It's the music industry and digital distribution story all over again. Consumers want their music a la carte, but it took the labels forever to ween themselves off the pre-packaged delivery system of CDs. But sell songs the way consumers want to buy them, and for less, and all of a sudden you will see a massive uptake in purchasing, as well as new models like subscription.

Well, the same can be said of publisher's content. Especially stuff like LexisNexis, or Thompson/Gale, or the Wall Street Journal. Yahoo today announced that they have cut deals with all these publishers, among others, to include their content, or at least summaries of it, in Yahoo searches (some are forthcoming, others are in at launch). Yahoo is calling this services "Yahoo Search Subscriptions." Unfortunately, the publishers are not letting Yahoo do what, really, Yahoo should be doing, which is acting as a central clearinghouse for transactions and subscription fulfillment/services. You still have to manage your sub with each individual publisher, which is way too much friction to activate the long tail user of paid content. But it's a step, and I think once the publishers dip their feet in, they'll realize the water is just fine.

In essence, publishers are terrified that if they allow their content into search engines, they'll never get paid for it, and they'll lose the relationship with the customer to boot. The database aggregators like LexisNexis, In particular, are wary of search. But if I could find LexisNexis articles in a Yahoo search, and easily click through and read them for a small fee (or a Rhapsody like option that lets me buy an unlimited sub for say $10 a month), why, I'd do it all day long. But don't ask me to log in to LexisNexis each time. Let Yahoo handle that. And don't make me pay $5 for each article. I'll never do it.

Paid Content coverage notes that no money is yet changing hands, it's simply a hand off between Yahoo and content partners. That is silly. When will publishers realize that Yahoo is the new newsstand, and they've earned their cut?

Gary has a long and well thought out overview here.

Press release in extended entry.

Continue reading "Yahoo Integrates Paid Subs, Newstand Model Ho!" »

I just saw a Miva ad that explains how they came up with their vaguely alien logo/typeface, which honestly, I did not like much when I first saw it (Miva is the old FindWhat plus whatever they bought over the past few years). Apparently, they combined the symbol for infinity with an arrow that goes up and to the right. If ever there were an example of packaging irrational exuberance into a neat corporate logo, here it is. Then again, I did pay attention to the ad, so there you have it.

Google has found itself in the midst of another tempest, whether this particular one is in a teapot or not depends on your point of view. The issue has to do with "pre fetching" - a practice for which Google got some heat back when it introduced its web accelerator.

I first saw note of this on Dave Farber's IP list. From the original post, by privacy advocate Lauren Weinstein:

...about a month ago, Google started triggering "prefetch"
page data for the top listings in search results. This behavior is
reportedly currently limited to users on Mozilla-based browsers
(Mozilla, Netscape, Firefox...)

The goal of this procedure is to allow users of those browsers to see
the top link results faster, since they'd already be cached locally.
But there are big downsides to this process.

One obvious problem is that it can distort Web server statistics, by
creating "hits" from users who never actually chose to visit the
sites in question, but were prefetched when their search listed those
sites at the top of results. For some sites, this may be a mere
annoyance, for others it could be a significant problem that could
affect their revenue patterns. This also has the side-effect of
creating a sudden artificial boost in Mozilla-based browser usage
statistics.

A much more serious issue is that the prefetching causes users to
actually access sites without ever having touched the associated
links -- and this includes the receiving of cookies. .....

....This means that your IP address and other typical connection data
have *already* been dropped into that site's logs, even though you
never chose to access that site, and you may now already be holding
cookies from them as well.

... imagine if an innocent search returned results where the
top-listed site contained information you'd never want to be
associated with nor access in any way (child porn, browser exploit
sucker-bait sites, illicit files -- you name it). Keep in mind that
such sites will often use various techniques specifically to boost
their rankings in search results....

...Bottom line: Creating a situation where users are "automatically"
accessing search-result sites without their having taken explicit
actions to do so is very bad policy. This problem is not the fault
of Google alone -- the prefetching mechanism has been present in
Mozilla-based browsers for quite some time.

However, when the planet's major search engine begins to routinely
use this technique in the manner that Google has done, it at the
very least suggests that they did not fully think through the
potentially serious anti-privacy ramifications of their actions, when
applied on the vast scale of their user base.

Tim posted on this issue as well, offering a clarification that Google only prefetches the first result.

I called Google and spoke to some folks there, they acknowledge that Google does the pre-fetching for Mozilla clients. But they argued that Google is doing it in a fashion that is compliant with web standards, and for a good reason: to speed up the web. Sophisticated webmasters can easily filter out pre-fetches from other kinds of requests, so logs won't be inflated, and users can turn fetching off it they want. For more on this issue, Google pointed me to Mozilla's link prefetching FAQ.

...when a company gets this kind of attention, someone should write a book about it (hey, wait...).

This project, as I understand it, is a meditation on the economics of Google. The angle:

We generate money by serving Google text advertisments on our website GWEI.org. With this money we automatically buy Google shares via our Swiss e-banking account. We buy Google via their own advertisment! Google eats itself - but in the end we will own it!

This is pretty much a Friday afternoon kind of site, but what the hell. Check out their fake site too. From their theoretical explanation of the project:

Google's position is predominant in the same moment it entered a new business field with a new service. It's the Google effect: creating consensus on a new business, even if it instantly got the predominant position. The greatest enemy of such a giant is not another giant. It's the parasite. If enough parasitites would suck small amount of money in this self-referentialism embodiment, they will empty this artificial mountain of data and its inner risk of digital totalitarianism.

As I like to say from time to time...exhaaaaaaale.....
(Hat tip, Philipp).

You decide. (Or see what Slashdot has to say).

This is a thread at Kuro5hin, a tech/culture site. It also gives an overview of companies Google has already purchased, and speculation on companies Google might buy (Koders, T'rati, Answers...most of them you've read about here....)

BTW, who will buy MySpace?

Gary notices it first...

Om has the scoop...

Stefanie has the goods at Cnet.

Google's planned service will let visitors find free short-form videos such as the popular "Star Wars" video spoofs, according to sources who asked to remain anonymous. The engine will complement the search giant's existing experimental site that lets people search the closed-caption text of television shows from PBS and CNN, among others, and preview accompanying still images. The new capabilities will let people watch roughly 10 seconds of Web video clips for free before shuttling visitors to the video's host site, sources say.

Sources said the new video search engine will be unveiled within the next two months.

I'm at Safa Rashtchy's Internet conference this week, posting may suffer as I soak up the knowledge here.

Interesting take from the fellow who made the famous Amazon $400 call. Net net: Google's valuation makes sense, but diversification in coming years is key to maintaining it.

The simplest way to frame the relative valuation question is to ask whether Google’s existing and future assets will generate more future cash than Time Warner’s existing and future assets. If one assumes that Google’s only significant revenue stream will be search, this seems a stretch: search may be mind-boggling, but it’s hard to believe it will generate more cash than television, magazines, cable, movies, and AOL combined. When one also factors in the value of Google’s traffic, brand, and market cap, however, the proposition seems reasonable. In 1998, when online “bookseller” Amazon surpassed Barnes & Noble’s $2 billion market cap, many deemed this absurd. Now, with Amazon selling everything under the sun, the disparity between its $15 billion and Barnes & Nobles’ $2.5 billion couldn’t seem more sane....

So Google investors can safely ignore the hysterical Time Warner comparisons. What they can’t ignore is the risk that, at some point soon, search growth will decelerate and Google’s FCF multiple will compress as momentum investors race for the doors.

Slashdot chews through it.

From MSN's own news feed:

Microsoft's new Chinese internet portal has banned the words "democracy" and "freedom" from parts of its website in an apparent effort to avoid offending Beijing's political censors.

One of the oldest push/pulls in the journalism game has to do with what business you're in - is it editorial, or is it advertising? Ask a publishing exec this question, and you'll usually get the same answer: News. But pick that answer apart, and pay attention to what publishing execs do, rather than what they say, and you often notice a distinct lean toward the "advertising" part of the equation. "Content" is the draw for audience, and audience is what the publisher is selling.

Which is why I found Gannett's recent purchase of PointRoll an interesting move. PointRoll is an innovator in online advertising, so the analysis, at first, seems pretty obvious: Gannett, a mainly old media company, is making a play to be relevant in the new media world.

But if that were the case, why isn't it buying content companies, like, er, Salon or something? Because content companies are not growing the way advertising companies are. PointRoll is on a roll; according to reports I've seen the company is growing at 40% a year.

So with PointRoll, Gannett makes a declaration: "We are in the advertising services business." Well, of course they are. You need to take care of both sides of your house. I only hope, as old media companies turn their attention, and their cash, to the Internet, they see the long term value of editorial as well.

Last year around this time (well, a bit later, we were running a bit late...) I posted a plea for input on the new conference I was to chair called Web 2.0. You responded in spades, and it really helped me figure out a spectacular program, one that I am still quite proud of.

This year we're doing it again, and again I need your help, your input, and your ideas. The conference will again be in San Francisco October 5-7, this time at the Argent Hotel, and once again I am teaming with Tim O'Reilly and MediaLive to produce the event.

The program for the sophomore edition of Web 2.0 is inspired by the simple observation that while last year was all about declaring the web as a platform for new and innovative business models, this year it's all about showing what can be done on that platform, and uncovering the innovative companies, ideas, and models from which all of us can learn. I'm (loosley) focusing on three areas that are truly taking off in 2005: Media & Entertainment, Communications (ie, the Web goes mobile and swallows telecom along the way), and the Web as OS.

To that end, we're adding few new elements to the event. Last year the "High Order Bit" was a hit - we had a dozen or so great presentations, all ten minutes or so, where a bunch of Big Ideas were unveiled. Bill Gross introduced Snap, Joe Kraus took the wraps off JotSpot, Kim Polese launched SpikeSource, and a bunch of other folks blew our minds with the future of gaming online, the real stats behind web usage (including porn), and the rather scary future we might be building ourselves if we continue to support, witting or not, a closed system of intellectual property development.

This year I've already got a bunch of great folks lined up for similar gigs - Tom Barton of Rackable, for example, on the bare metal of Web 2.0, and Bran Ferren on, well, whatever is turning him on in October. But I want more. That's the first thing I'd ask you for - input on great new ideas, people, and companies to debut in October. I was very proud that we had nearly a dozen new product or company introductions at the event. If you've got one coming out this Fall, or you know of one, let me know.

I've also expanded the High Order Bit into a new element I'm calling "Show Me." The idea here is to show something that is going to change how we understand the web, rather than just talk about it. Sky Dayton, for example, is going to show what it's like to live in South Korea, where they've have full 3G "web in the air" for more than three years. And Mark Phillips is going to show what a web-enabled fully immersive 3D battle simulation looks like - something that is informing US strategy right now across the world (and may just trickle down to all our businesses in the near future). Speaking of immersive web apps, Rolf Harken, whose company did the renderings for The Matrix, is going to show his RealityServer. Prepare to have your mind blown. (One of the coolest apps he told me about was for...WalMart!)

But I want more! So if you've seen something amazing, or want to see something amazing, let me know about it!

I'm also adding little croutons the Web 2.0 salad which I'm calling "UI Minutes." These are elegant, smart, and often jaw-dropping user interface hacks which have the potential to inform all of us how best to design web experiences. Google Maps would have made the list (we did show Keyhole right before it was acquired), as would the Flickr Color Wheel. Got any ideas around this? Let me know!

We've already got a wonderful set of speakers for this year (some I can't announce yet, but a full list will be posted this week when the site officially goes live). But I'm always looking for more, so tell me if you or your company is interested.

And finally, the heart of Web 2.0 may well be the workshops. This year we're going to do them again, and they are included in the price of admission (last year we charged extra for them). We had such a killer lineup last year, it'll be hard to exceed it. But I want to try. This is where we can really drill down into a topic, like RSS business models, tagging, vertical search, and the like. If you have an idea for a workshop or want to do one, you know what to do....

Hope to see you in SF this Fall!

Fallows complains that search is not very good at answering sophisticated questions (no kidding) and a Times reporter wonders if Google is worth $300 a share (answer: no answer. From the article: "Is it a price worth paying? Sure, if it really is different this time."

One of my favorite current gripes is how the mobile world lives in a walled garden, and fails at the basic test: Can I build on my mobile device what I can build on the web? I'm not talking about pure functionality, of course, I understand that there are device- and context-specific constraints. I'm talking about presumptive ecologies here - the web is open, mobile is closed. That means you have to go through carriers to get anything done, or have a business model of any kind. That means development is limited, and, well, mobile apps are constrained.

This could be changing. SEW notes that Yahoo has signed a deal with Mobile Commerce to provide keyword ads for a WAP-based travel search play. Not exactly revolutionary, but it shows the bleeding over of web-based models (paid search) into the mobile space. I am not very mobile savvy, but I yearn for the day I can have a device which has, at its core, the equivalent of "Naked DSL" built in, so folks can deliver cool applications and business models to my mobile device without having to cut Verizon, Sprint, or someone else in on the deal. Will it ever happen?

...I'm posting about Acronyma, the search engine for acronyms. (Hat tip to ResearchBuzz)

Fun piece by Saul in the Times about how AOL is using search advertising to lure folks to its portal, where one of the key elements is, well, search. Of course, the key differentiator is going to be programming, of both varieties, and we'll see if they get that right...

Who loses? TV. From the piece:

AOL had initially considered spending as much as $50 million on television ads to promote the portal. But that changed after the company noticed that the biggest source of traffic to its free music site was free and paid listings on other search engines.

It's a very new look, and incorporates tag-based search. More as more comes in...

This time, it's an upgrade to its video search. From MediaPost:

AMERICA ONLINE'S AUDIO/VIDEO SEARCH UNIT Singingfish Inc. today is expected to announce a series of new content-feed partnerships with AtomFilms, CBSNews.com, and Dow Jones'MarketWatch, among others.

That's a lot of posting, folks.

Ask Jeeves®, Inc. (Nasdaq: ASKJ) today announced that Bloglines™ (www.bloglines.com), the world’s most popular free online service for searching, subscribing, publishing and sharing news feeds, blogs and rich web content, has set a new standard among newsreaders: 500 million blog and news feed articles are now stored in the service’s comprehensive, searchable database.

Update: Got ahead of myself. Saw trillion where I shoulda seen billion. That'll be next year's post...

From SVW:

Google plans to use trucks equipped with lasers and digital photographic equipment to create a realistic 3D online version of San Francisco, and eventually other major US cities.

The move would trump Amazon's A9 service, which offers two-dimensional photos of buildings on US city streets.

I dunno. My first question is....why?

Vertical Leap sounds like a neat conference and it has a great lineup, I had to decline an offer to attend (sked conflict) but I wish I could go. Here's the skinny:

Search is going Vertical -- vertical search engines are available for local businesses, product & shopping search, travel search, weblog & news search, and search for classified & jobs listings, with more domain-specific search engines debuting every month.

So is Vertical Search just some new hype for Yahoo and Google? Or is there real opportunity for new startups to emerge as domain-killer search engines?

Dave McClure of Simply Hired and Jeff Clavier of SoftTech are program chairs, it's run by SDForum.

PS - Great column by Gary on domain search and online databases here. Gary knows what many of us don't - there's great online access to databases that you might never have thought were available, if you only use...your library. And you don't even need to leave your keyboard to do it.

BizWeek reports that SBC and BellSouth have cut a deal for listings on AOL.

The battle over local Internet advertising pits some of America's most powerful companies against each other over a highly lucrative business. Profit margins at Yellow Pages publishers are often higher than 50%, excluding interest, taxes and noncash charges.

There's one hitch: The print Yellow Pages business is growing slowly -- only about 1% to 2% a year, according to researchers at Kelsey. But the combined business of Internet Yellow Pages and local Web search is expected to grow 50% a year, from about $670 million last year to $5.1 billion in 2009.

(Thanks, Craig)

"No return to walled gardens," AOL CEO Jonathan Miller said in Bizweek today. Huzzah! I say. The company yesterday announced free email, and more is coming.

So, here's my open letter to Time Warner, especially given my last post on the value of Google. It's very short:

Dear Time Warner:

You opened up AOL. Good move. Now, set it free.

Love,

Searchblog.

At least, that's what Wall St. is saying, according to the Hollywood Reporter (summary only). It's now more valuable than Time Warner.

Wall Street has determined that Google Inc. is the most valuable media company on the planet. Shares of the company that went public in August at $75 rose $10.68 on Monday to close at $290.94, giving the new-media youngster a market capitalization of $80.8 billion, according to Yahoo! Finance. Meanwhile, shares of Time Warner, which until Monday was considered the world's biggest media company, dropped 23 cents to $17.02, giving the company a $79.8 billion market cap.

Today the stock is up to more than 297 and it's only mid morning in NYC. Sigh, how does that make the TW folks feel, I wonder, given that the scars from the AOL deal seem never to fully heal?

Wait, I know! It's time for a TW/Google merger!

Now, there's a few things to think about with this run up. First, Google's DNA is not as a media company, so this might seem an odd comparison for some folks within the 'plex. But Wall St. compares apples (media revenues) to apples (media revenue), and by that standard, the comparison sticks.

Second, from the looks of early trading, it seems Google will break 300 today. I have this theory about the company - it's our Web 2.0 rorschach - we see in it what we wish and dream for. We're far to smart to wish for another NASDAQ run up like we had in 1999-2000 (remember how the index kept piling on 10% increases every single week?) - but we can at least have it all in one company.

And lastly, I would not wish these expectations on anyone. Honestly, it feels like the market is getting way ahead of the company. Can or will the triumvirate manage to them? Despite protestations otherwise, how can they not?

I'm speaking today in San Francisco at their OMMA West show. I'l be talking about the effect of search and blogging on media, and a tiny bit about FM, my new project (the theory behind the FM approach is very much influenced by the interaction of search, blogging, and media). If you're there, say hello!

Somehow, this feels right - a correction was due. Mediapost reports on the monthly Fathom release.

MORTGAGE-RELATED SEARCH TERMS DROPPED IN price by 30 percent, leading an overall decrease in average keyword prices of 15 percent from April to May, to an average of $1.66 from $1.95, according to the Fathom Online Keyword Price Index, released today.

Bubbler seems like a cool idea, I'd heard of it before, and now SVW has a write up. It's something of a mashup between blogging and first generation webpage building apps...if anyone is using it, lemme know...

When I was in college, I was the Scholarship Chairman of my house. I ran colloquiums on various subjects. I posted a Big Idea - "Man kind is neither, discuss" - and then used my budget on....a lava lamp, and a lot of, er, herbal refreshments.

Seems like Charlie Rose is doing the same. A lot of joints after midnight in a recent segment featuring Eric Schmidt of Google (not online yet, if anyone sees it...let me know). I'll have to find a copy of this to watch, it sounds like there was a lot of smoke being blown around. SiliconValleyWatcher has an overview. From SVW's summary of Eric's comments:

Search is a force for peace and a better world. Google will reveal how everybody lives and thinks and speaks and looks and that is beneficial to world peace....

Mr Schmidt says Google recruits by appealing to people who want to make big changes in the world and convince them that they should do it with Google. Why? Because Google has the scale in computing and organization.

And because of its size, Google represents the largest opportunity they will ever have in their lifetimes. ....

Mr Schmidt said the lava lamps help introduce people to the Google way.

Ahh......exhaaaaaaaaaaaalllle.

(Next up, a bout of paranoia?)

(PPS - anyone get the joke of Anil's shirt in the NYT photo from that last link? (thanks, Andre...))

Apparently, shopping.

Now here's some domain specific search - MacherSearch. It uses Vivisimo to crawl a specific list of Jewish sites and blogs.

Google just released a study (no release yet, though I've been promised one) showing that for B2B advertisers, search is more effective than trade journals. If that's not a shot across the bow of every niche publisher in the world, I dunno what is. (via AdWeek)

(The study) polled 900 technology professionals with involvement in purchasing in enterprise application software, security software and server storage. The online poll found search was used 30 percent more frequently than trade periodicals in the research phase of the buying cycle. Search was 21 percent more frequently used than the b-to-b press in the consideration phase and 62 percent more in the final purchase phase.

Andy has a good breakdown.

FindWhat and ESpotting rebrand as "Miva."

You know this idea's got legs. From Slashdot:

BetaNews says that AOL is open sourcing Winamp AVS and Milkdrop, two popular Winamp plug-ins, and its Ultravox streaming media platform (the successor to Shoutcast). 'Despite helping to launch the Mozilla Foundation and releasing the code to its AOL Server software, America Online has never been synonymous with open source. But a number of new initiatives could change AOL's proprietary image, as the company strives to reach a broader audience on the open Web.'

Look for news of AOL's new open web launch shortly...

Will Google split its stock? Given its love of Buffet, probably not, says Bloomberg News. So does that mean smaller investors will be priced out of owning it? Yes and no. Yes, they probably can't own it if if keeps going up - Buffet's stock is at 84K or so - but they can always buy a fund that owns it. In other words, if Google does not split, it'll end up being owned mostly by institutions.

Prices such as Google's make it more difficult for individual, or retail, investors to buy and sell stock, according to David Ikenberry, a finance professor at the University of Illinois in Champaign.

``It's clear that higher sales price equates with higher institutional ownership,'' Ikenberry said in an interview. ``At a certain level, the retail market gets priced out.''

Google clearly understands the importance of grokking change. Thursday it launched and "experiment" it calls Google Sitemaps, an XML-based open standard that allows webmasters to inform Google of website changes. Slashdot thread here. Danny on this here.

From its blog post:

We're undertaking an experiment called Google Sitemaps that will either fail miserably, or succeed beyond our wildest dreams, in making the web better for webmasters and users alike. It's a beta "ecosystem" that may help webmasters with two current challenges: keeping Google informed about all of your new web pages or updates, and increasing the coverage of your web pages in the Google index.

Interesting to note:

This project doesn't just pertain to Google, either: we're releasing it under the Attribution/Share Alike Creative Commons license so that other search engines can do a better job as well. Eventually we hope this will be supported natively in webservers (e.g. Apache, Lotus Notes, IIS).

Earlier this week I spent some time on the phone with Bob Wyman, CTO and founder of PubSub. Over the past year Bob has been heckling me for focusing on "retrospective search - Google and Yahoo, et al, and not paying attention to his offering of" prospective search," or searching what he calls the "GrayWeb" - that part of the web which is available and open, but is rarely seen because our view of the web is so dependent on traditional approaches to search. Wyman focuses on that portion of the GrayWeb that changes rapidly - the "ChangingWeb" where the future hits the present, where the unique element of the dataset is the fact of its newness. That window - when the information is knowable, but before it becomes forever eternalized in The Index - is where PubSub lives.

In short, PubSub crawls (mostly) blog feeds and offers a service that allows you to stay abreast of topics you choose as new information breaks. (PubSub just announced a political cut of this kind of data, for example). To me, PubSub felt a lot like Google or Yahoo news alerts on steroids, a Feedster clone. But after talking to Bob, I came away convinced that there's more to PubSub than meets the eye.

PubSub is named for "publish/subscribe" - a well traveled piece of IT theory that has, at its core, the assumption of structured data. Back in the earlier days of the computer biz, Apple, DEC, and others realized the need for users to be alerted with things change - in a database publishing model, for example, a new rev of a document would create an alert. These companies invented publish-subscribe models that, for the most part, really never took off. Why? I think the code was overspecified, and the user interface cumbersome. Wyman worked on pubsub apps at DEC - in fact, he built the pubsub piece of AllInOne, a Notes-like application that had a brief moment in the sun in the late 80s, if memory serves.

A few years ago Wyman found himself wondering if it were possible to apply the publish and subscribe model to the entire world wide web. That's a pretty audacious idea, but focusing on blogs was a good way to start , because blogs have a wealth of feed-based structured data around each post (timestamp, author, title, often a category). Wyman claims to have figured out algorithms which allow PubSub to process the ChangingWeb rapidly and "at internet scale."

I'm not in position to judge those claims, but I like the theory behind Bob's intentions. He plans to create tools that allows bloggers to easily tag their posts with category like information - "this is a book review" or "this is an event announcement." He's already built plug ins for Word Press and is looking to continue his work with other platforms like MT, which have similar widgets that so far are not aligned around a particular standard.

In theory anyway, Bob is onto something here. It's yet another attempt to build the semantic web from the bottom up, and it suffers from all the foibles of such an effort, but the intent is good - let the individual publishers build data structures which, in aggregate, create a fuzzy kind of value that developers can tap into. Were enough of these kind of structured and tagged data sets to become available ("This is a job posting," "this is something for sale,") we might well see services evolve which are built on the premise of freely available data - in other words, a new kind of publishing model, one where value comes from what you do with the data, as opposed to who owns access to the data. That may not seem like a big change, but in fact it would be - eBay, Monster, Yahoo, et al are all based on the idea of owning the environment in which structured data lives. More on this shortly, but for now, check out PubSub and let me know what you think.

I have a big Web 2.0 meeting later today and will be in the city for much of the day, so posting will be light. Friday or Monday I will be posting a longish riff on PubSub, and also a call for input and feedback on early ideas I have on Web 2.0 program, which is really shaping up. Talk to you then...

Mark Glaser has filed a column on questionable SEO practices in the OJR. It focuses on Quixtar, the online arm of multi-level marketing king Amway. From the piece:

The company, a revamped online version of Amway, has had trouble with critics online and decided to fight them by unloading an arsenal of search engine optimization (SEO) techniques that go against accepted marketing techniques and into the muddy world of Web page spam, also known as link farms and Google bombing.

To put it simply, Quixtar enlisted various people to help create dozens of Weblogs that linked to each other and were filled with positive stories and key words. The idea is to help put these newer blogs at the top of search results for phrases such as "Quixtar success" and "Quixtar opportunity," while more critical sites such as

Quixtar Blog and Amquix.info would drop down.

It's interesting to see how a company like Amway/Quixtar is using search to squelch its critics and promote a positively skewed vision of its practices. Not unlike Scientology, Amway is a controversial topic, one that has adamant detractors (it's a scam, a cult, a house of cards) and true believers (it changed my life, it really works, you too can get rich...). It also has plenty of folks who are just working the plan and not really taking sides.

Net net: Another proof point in the motto You Are What The (first few links in the) Index Says You Are....

Now here's a Google algorithm update they must have named just for me. Nicknamed Bourbon, (I guess this is better than Florida), the update is ongoing. According to "GoogleGuy," a Google employee who hangs out in search related forums and assuages the fears of webmasters (he's been know to show up here too...):

Here's the advice that I'd give now: take a break from checking ranks for several more days. Bourbon includes something like 3.5 improvements in search quality, and I believe that only a couple are out so far. The 0.5 will go out in a day or so, and the last major change should roll out over the next week or so. Then there will still be some minor changes after that as well. So my "weather report" along the lines of http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000095.html would be a recommendation that rankings may still change somewhat over the next several days.

Hat tip:

Threadwatch

I am not a fan of the Patriot Act, as you can see here. The Times has an editorial about the next rev of the act, many parts of which are due for renewal this Fall. The first act redefined many key legal terms so as to make your search history and the like far more susceptible to government snooping without notification, but this second rev sounds scarier. From the editorial:

One of the most common complaints about the Patriot Act is that rather than addressing the real but narrow problems with existing law, it was a wish list of powers law enforcement officials had yearned for over the years that Congress had rightly resisted conferring. Now the Bush administration and its Senate allies have come up with another: a proposal to let F.B.I. agents write their own "administrative subpoenas," without the need to consult prosecutors or judges, in demand of all manner of records, from business to medical and tax data. There is no serious evidence that agents have been hamstrung by the lack of such wide authority.

Freeing agents from getting a judge's sign-off is an invitation to overreaching and abuse, as is a proposal to let the F.B.I. ignore postal law restraints when antiterrorism agents choose to monitor someone's letter envelopes and package covers.

Hell, it's not the post office we should be worried about, it's Google Desktop and its ilk. Remember my ephemeral to eternal riff? Uh huh.