John Battelle's Searchblog

Take that, YouTube, Google, MySpace, AOL, and everyone else!

From the release:

Yahoo! Inc..... today introduced Yahoo! Video (http://video.yahoo.com), an online video destination that combines the power of Yahoo! Search with new upload, browse and community ...
Yahoo! Video allows users to access the most popular and relevant videos on the Internet including The Glomp, Lazy Ramadi and the latest Shakira music video. It brings together content in more ways than any other video Web site by crawling the Web, accepting uploads, receiving direct feeds from partners, and leveraging the Yahoo! Media Group’s unique content and industry relationships. As a leader in online video, Yahoo! already hosts and serves hundreds of millions of music, news, sports, movies, and television videos per month. Now, Yahoo! Video combines these assets with content from across the Web and directly from publishers, enabling users to determine what videos are most important to them:
- Featured, Popular, Category and Tag sections enable users to easily browse for videos.
- Users can subscribe to and watch channels, groups of videos related by source or topic, to stay current on content from their favorite publishers.
- Users can access the largest database of videos on the Web through Yahoo! Search
Additionally, Yahoo! Video enables users and video enthusiasts to participate in an active social community by rating, reviewing and sharing videos.

48m contribute user-content
A PEW study finds that nearly 50 million American adults, or about 35 percent of internet users, have contributed user-generated content (or UGC) on the internet. The news bit that is driving headlines, however, is that there is an up-tick in broadband home users---including 73 percent of those bloggers and online media self-publishers. "Adoption of high-speed internet at home grew twice as fast in the year prior to March 2006 than in the same time frame from 2004 to 2005," primarily in middle-income homes. The Pew Internet & American Life Project report also notes that 51 percent of home broadband users are under 30 and only 36 percent were over 30 years old.

Fo.rtuito.us
Sometimes people prefer to "StumbleUpon" rather than search. Premised on the same inclination, Fo.ruito.us helps people meet each other randomly, then decide if they like what they've found. One begins with an open email line to a stranger, with no knowledge about them---not their gender, race , age, nationality or otherwise. Users have four days to communicate and determine if they want to be friends. If you don't make contact at least once, then you do not receive a new potential friend. Just released in beta, Fo.rtuito.us was founded by Chris Stegner.

The Fo.rtuito.us websites says it "allows people to meet others who live completely different lives. We want people to be able to form some of the best friendships of their lives and in many cases from the least likely of candidates. We want this web-site to open their eyes to the world they're missing by not learning about others."

TechCrunch's Michael Arrington likes the idea. And WebProNews points out a bug: "a photo is required for signup, which takes away from the anonymity and the beauty-is-on-the-inside concept"---just don't upload a portrait as your icon.

Stalkerati
And once you've made new friends, you can start stalking them with Stalkerati. This friendly little mash-up of web 2.0 sites provides a one-site search on the individual of your choosing simultaneously in MySpace, FaceBook, Friendster, Google, Technorati, and for images (in Yahoo, Flickr).

Says the creator, Jared, who starts college in California this fall: "This site is basically a little hack I put together in 2 hours on May 1st, 2006 when a friend was heading out for a blind date and my sis was asked out (via email) by a guy that googled her. I hope to eliminate the hassle of going to 4-5 sites to find information/check out/cyberstalk/[insert excuse for cyberstalking here] on someone."
The site, launched early this month, just finished a push that brought with it a digg traffic jam, so you may have to check back if you want to test it out.

An Interview with Google Enterprise VP
Dan Farber at ZNet interviewed VP/GM of GoogleEnterprise Dave Girouard last week. Here's part one and part two of the interview, in case you missed it on your way out for the weekend. They discuss "elusive Google Web Office," the Enterprise portfolio, disinterest in the software game, and product strategy in coordination with Microsoft's Office Live. "The company is experimenting with a hosted service that includes domain hosting, email, calendar, instant messaging, desktop search and administrative services."

OurStory beta
The startup OurStory publically launches in beta its interactive, web-based scrapbook. OurStory's various tagging and uploading features let users create a timeline of events they can share and search through. Silicon Beat gives a full review of its many neat features, like automatically searching the web for pictures of events you mention and pinging relatives to fill-in unanswered questions about pictures. And CBS has an audio interview from when OurStory launched in mid-May. Most of OurStory is free, but the upgrade comes with the ability to store multiple timelines, control several privacy circles, and eventually burn your story to DVD or print it into a book.

That's how much Internet advertising accounts for, the IAB reports. As with every other one of these reports, I predict this figure will be revised, upward. A lot. For the second year in a row, the first quarter beat the last year's fourth quarter, which is very unusual in advertising markets (the fourth quarter is very heavy on the holiday marketing spend...and February sucks, usually).

From the Google AdSense Blog:

What can I do with the AdSense API?

Using the AdSense API, you can enable users to perform a variety of AdSense functions without leaving your website, including the following:

- Create an AdSense account
- Manage an AdSense account
- Create and modify AdSense for content ad units and link units, AdSense for search boxes, and Referrals
- View detailed reports to monitor performance and earnings

How does the AdSense API benefit your site and users?

By making it easy for publishers to sign up for AdSense and generate revenue, the API offers another compelling reason for publishers to choose your service over a competitor's--and remain loyal to you. The AdSense API is great for publishers who don't want the hassle of setting up their own accounts or dealing with cutting and pasting HTML snippets.

I am usually at D this time of year, soaking in the big names and big interviews. But this year, work and other parts of life intervened. But Eric Savitz, of Barrons (current) and Industry Standard (past) fame, is blogging it, and I recommend his work. He covers Bill Gates' interview, and it sounds good. Gates said MSFT will be doing "petabytes in the sky," for example, when asked about the Google Grid.

"Googlearchy or Googlocracy?"
An article by several researchers refutes the notion that the Google search engine reinforces the popularity of high PageRank sites. The IEEE Spectrum article "Googlearchy or Googlocracy?" is by five academics at the University of Indiana, Filippo Menczer, Santo Fortunato, Alessandro Flammini, and Alessandro Vespignani--who discuss the surprising results of their original paper:
While search engines do not make for a level playing field, their use partially mitigates the rich-get-richer nature of the Web, giving new sites an increased chance of being discovered.

Google AdsBot
Google has a new search spider called AdsBot that will visit the landing pages of ads to asses the quality of an ad campaign for AdWords. It can be blocked, like other search engine spiders, but AdRank scores will be penalized as non-participatory. SEW explains: That quality score, along with the amount you are willing to pay, is then used to determine an ad's AdRank, the position where an ad will appear in the results. A high quality score means you can rank higher even if you pay less than others.

First mentioned last December, the AdsBot will begin operation soon. Here's a comment by Page (in a recent, peripheral but relevant, interview) that gives some insight into the overall reasoning at play:
The reason people look at the ads spaces and eventually click on ads is because they're really high quality---they're comparable to the search results. If the ads are of substantially worse [quality] than the search results then---guess what, people are smart and they actually learn not to look at that area of the screen. If you test this: in places where there are normally banner ads, people's eyes go around that area.

The Invasion of MS Messenger
Microsoft is hosting a contest called "Invasion of Robots" to design accessory robots for its Live Messenger (beta). Developers are equipped with three software developer kits, challenged to create bots that enhance user experience in Messenger (e.g. adding features like picture sharing or search capability), for a total of $40K in prize money. There are three bots up for public voting so far---one provides Encarta answers to questions, another feeds quotes from "our fearless leader - W". (Via TechTree)

WikiMapia
Wikipedia + Google Maps = WikiMapia.

BlockRocker the beta "Geoaggregator"
BlockRocker pulls geotags loaded in external sites, like Flickr, Technorati, and Webview360. Users can also submit their own geotags through Flickr, blog posts through Technorati, or any webpage with Blockrocker geotagging bookmarklet (modeled on del.icio.us). It's creator, Rod Edwards, says eventually he hopes to integrate Block Rocker into any location-aware device. So "if you're in downtown SF with nothing to do, I'd like you to be able to open BR.mobi on your phone and find out what's going on that night within a three block radius of wherever you are. One step at a time, though."

Looking for a few good (print reading) geniuses
Google is recruiting with a full-page print ad in Wired magazine. Danny Sullivan at SEW advises, "If you didn't skip three grades and failed to learn Lisp by age 10 like Niniane, there's no need to apply."

Tim's back from vacation, and his thoughtful post is here. For anyone who was quick to judge this whole thing, I'd encourage you to read it.

User generated content is hot - HOT! But if you're a UGC (yup, I'm using the acronym) site, like RateItAll, Facebook, YouTube, or MySpace, how do you incent your members to post more great stuff, so you can make more money? Well, Google is only too happy to help you out there. Word has leaked recently (Eric was first) that Google is (reportedly) working on a new API that will allow content sites to distribute AdSense earnings to individual members. RateItAll apparently blew the embargo by posting a release discussing this too early. From it:

Pioneering online community and social network RateItAll.com today announced that it had integrated Google AdSense into its service via an API in order to share advertising inventory with RateItAll members.

By leveraging the Google AdSense API, RateItAll has enabled its members to create Google AdSense accounts, earn cash for their content contributions, and track their earnings without ever leaving the RateItAll.com Web site.

As SEOLowdown notes, this could be huge for sites like YouTube. Emphasis on could be. But coupled with Video Adsense, once might imagine a pretty interesting mash up here.

To toss a bit of cold water here, however, I've never seen UGC sites as the least bit driven by money. They are driven by pride, the desire to be first, reputation, whuffie. But dollars? That often screws it all up. I guess we'll get to see soon enough...

...next quarter's numbers don't really get you going. What might? Well, I've been on about this a lot in the past, but how about solving the Turing test? This Channel 4 piece (UK) covers Google's European Zeitgeist conference. In the piece, Page is asked about what his ideal search engine would be: His answers: "The ultimate search engine would understand everything in the world," Page says. "In computer science we call that Artificial Intelligence."

More detail (much) here at the Memepunks blog.

Page and Schmidt are also asked about China, and privacy, and give the same answers they've given elsewhere. Save Page's quote on waiting to go into China: "We took a principled stand for a long time....and all we did was lose marketshare." Thanks KK.

Is this finally Google Payments? It'd be about time...

He don't like AOL search much....

Now, you know you're old and, well, not very hip when you LOOK FORWARD to a long weekend because it will let you GET YOUR FILING DONE. And you spend Saturday night .... filing paper. But that's exactly my situation.

Regardless of our digital lives, I have a bi-annual ritual going where I file all the paper that comes across my desk at home - all the insurance forms, the household bills, the little league rules....

Tonight I stared down a full box of paper that needed to be filed, and...I am stoked: I conquered the mess. I've now got neatly ordered file folders, which I'm sure I'll ignore for the next seven or so years of my life, then toss out.

The thickest files I've created in the first half of 2006? My "Medical Expenses" file (do the insurance companies do anything but create paper?) and my "School Board" file (I'm on my kids school board). Health and education - it kind of makes sense.

If Myspace is so last year, then buy what's hot this year while it's still not too pricey. This is fashion, baby. You have to keep up with the times...

There's a tempest out there in blog land about my partners' use of the "bigfoot letter" tactic in defending their Web 2.0 trademark as it relates to conferences. Many of my readers are asking about it. I'm going to wait to comment on this in detail till I talk to Tim, who is on vacation and out of touch this week, but in short, I think this response from O'Reilly is pretty good. They screwed up by not first having a conversation with the folks in Ireland, and they relented on forcing the trademark issue right away. I'm sure Tim will have more to say about it, as it happened while he was gone, and I want to talk to him before I dive too deep. Meanwhile, this is not some evil plot to "own" Web 2.0. It's narrowly limited to its use as a trademark for conferences. Remember, Web 2.0 is also about having a business that works. And not protecting your trademarks is simply bad business practice.

Update: Lots of comments, and also, remember that Tim is really offline, and has no idea this has happened. I want to hear from him, but meanwhile, Cory at BB has weighed in, and I like what he has to say.

This is the difference between Apple and Microsoft, in a nutshell.

Thanks, JH.

OK, I KNOW this is old, but I did NOT KNOW this was an internal Microsoft video. That makes this so much funnier.

But don't relax yet. From Wired News:

The House Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved legislation aimed at preventing broadband providers from discriminating against unaffiliated services, content and applications.

Content providers like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have expressed concerns that they would be forced to pay ISPs extra to ensure consumers can access their content.

The measure, approved by a vote of 20-13, would amend U.S. antitrust law. It would also counter a rival bill from another House committee that wants to encourage network providers to preserve consumers' ability to freely surf the internet instead of adopting stricter rules.

Yes, but....there's too much at stake to think this is anything but a temporary victory in a long, drawn out war.

When I read this in the Journal today, I thought, "isn't this deal already done?" Then I remembered that, no, it was simply discussed, but not inked. So now it's official - Google is playing the distribution game, just like Microsoft does. From the (paid reg required) article:

Google Inc. and Dell Inc. have reached an agreement to install Google software on millions of Dell personal computers before they are shipped to users, said Google's Chief Executive Eric Schmidt.

Under a roughly three-year pact, Google, of Mountain View, Calif., would pay Dell to have its desktop software for searching the content of a user's hard drive and emails, and a Web browser search toolbar installed on the computers, according to people in the industry familiar with the matter. Dell would also set the default search engine for users to Google's offering, one of the sources said. Financial terms are not expected to be disclosed. Talks between Google and Dell were first reported in The Wall Street Journal in February.

My take on this: I'm not entirely sure how to think about this, beyond the obvious. Sure, this makes sense from a business standpoint, but Google did not get to become Google by cutting exclusive distribution deals. It got there by having the best product, a product that folks literally climbed over walls to get to. These kind of deals are, well, pretty pedestrian - they are pay for play: paid inclusion, of a sort. And I thought that was not a very Googley thing to do.

On the other hand, it's not 1998 anymore. Times have changed, and if Google is going to keep abreast of its competition, it needs to act like any other company.

Now ain't that something!

I'm reeling from a 12 hour (yes, 12 hour) trip from Chicago to SF last night but this morning's news must be at least noted, for now: Yahoo and eBay are hooking up, clearly a move against Google - eBay accounts for hundreds of millions of dollars in Google's revenue. From what I can make out, however, this deal does not change eBay's relationship with Google, rather, it marks Yahoo's first major syndication win in years. From USA Today:

Under the deal, Yahoo will be exclusive third-party provider of all graphic ads throughout eBay's auction site. Yahoo has also chosen EBay's online payment system, PayPal, to allow its customers to pay for Yahoo Web services.

It's tempting to say Google loses here, and while I am sure the company would love to have eBay's site amongst its syndicated partners (like AOL and Ask), I am not surprised in the least that Yahoo won this round. The market tends to balance itself, and this is a major proof point.

I know this is totally off topic, but I've had the truly life changing experience of routing through Chicago's O Hare airport three times in the past week. As much as I'd like to report that things have changed at the proudly self proclaimed "world's busiest airport", alas, this report is quite the opposite. I lost more than two days of my life to that hell hole. In short, Chicago O'Hare sucks, and I, for one, would rather spend three extra hours in the air simply to avoid landing there, and I'd heartily recommend anyone who might be considering O'Hare as a destination to, well, reconsider before the place sucks you into the seventh circle of hell, a place from which I am only now emerging. I think.

Amazon gets book smart
Amazon adds an Online Reader for search inside books. John says, "If this is what I think it is, this signals that Amazon is getting into all forms of readable content online, a shift in biz model strategy."

Resource Shelf summarizes the features:
- Search for words or phrases in the book (you can also search the entire Amazon.com database or A9).
- View single pages or continuous pages by scrolling
- Zoom in or Zoom out (very useful)...
...and notes that this is all part of Amazon's step further into the "upgrade program where you can read purchased books online, print pages, add notes, bookmark pages, etc." which "is similar to what you can already do with books accessible (for free)."

Technorati & AP team-up
Technorati and the Associated Press begin sharing a dynamic feed of the most blogged about AP articles at its +400 member sites. The Technorati announcement: Increasingly, what the blogosphere says about a news story becomes part of a more complete story, lending diverse perspectives and often expert commentary...When readers visit an AP member Web site that uses AP Hosted Custom News, they will see a module featuring the "Top Five Most Blogged About" AP articles right next to the article text, dynamically powered by Technorati. Additionally, when readers click on an AP article, Technorati will deliver "Who’s Blogging About" that article.
This follows similar service partnerships Technorati shares with the WashPost and other publications. Bloggers cheer.

Free eBook fair
Celebrate the 35th anniversary of free eBooks and the Project Gutenberg. For its birthday month of July, Gutenberg plans to offer free, permanent download access to over 1/3 million books. The PDF-file books are available with support from The World eBook Library, which Resource Shelf says normally charges $8.95 a pop for a permanent download. (SearchBlog recently looked forward to scanning through a good eBook at the neighborhood universal library.)

Data mining the blogosphere
A new paper maps out what the blogosphere offers in research potential and challenges. Written by Gilad Mishne at the Intelligent Systems Lab, University of Amsterdam, "Information Access Challenges in the Blogspace" is available in PDF.

First, Mishne describes the blogosphere: in time, as highly dynamic and tied to current events; in structure, as primarily a network of individuals in one-to-one relationships; in language, by informality and subjectivity. Mishne foresees a huge development in the still-infant specialized blog-search services and tools --such as Technorati and Blogpulse. According to the paper, the blogosphere grows at a rate of 750,000 new posts per day, with a steady readership of 20% of internet users. A couple speed bumps in both data analysis and retrieval: frequent misspellings that skew keyword tracking and spam. Mishne concludes the blogspace ultimately lends itself to future research in sentiment analysis, tapping the vox populi for the genesis and evolution of trends, profiling individual bloggers and communities, and enhancing search quality.

Instant, dynamic, spelling-flexible search
A series of search engines, developed by the German company Exorbyte, provide instant, dynamic, orthographically-adaptive suggestions and results. Co-founder, Franz Guenthner, a Professor of Computational Linguistics at the University of Munich (previously at AltaVista, All The Web), says that "contrary to the Google type of suggest in use elsewhere e.g. Snap.com - [Exorbyte] finds all the records in the index even when the query is orthographically defective" (spelled wrong).

Here are a few demos applying their search engines:
- A tri-lingual (French, German, English) engine that supplies Wikipedia entries: Exorbyte -Wiki
- A German job search engine, launched last week: Job a Nova
- A German shopping site: Billinger
Guenthner says Exorbyte engines can "search tens of millions of records in an "approximate mode" at under 10 milliseconds."

CQ Web is relased in beta
Today, Q-Phase releases its contextual web search tool CQ Web in beta. CQ Web breaks down a search query into an index of keywords, 'keypairs', and keyphrases, each with corresponding focused results. Q-Phrase says CQ Web identifies relationships not only between the original search terms, but also among keywords extracted from the results pages.

Aside from the obvious search giants, CQ Web accesses several Web 2.0 content sites including MySpace and del.icio.us, bringing the number of search engine options to eleven. One note, their press release says CQ WEB automatically visits "the most relevant search results" of the major search engines "to discover significant keywords and topics relating top the original search query"---that sort of sounds like CQ Web only analyzes the first few pages (or however many) of results from whichever search engine you select for it to piggyback.

After playing with the beta (downloadable for PC and Mac OS X) with a search on "Searchblog" using Google, a mini review of CQ Web. I'm not so sure the "interface circumvents the 'hit or miss' nature and trial-and-error link clicking" as promised, but then that's a big promise. CQ Web can help an initial search query be more robust by delivering more contextualized results, but it looks like the beta still needs refining. (The query on Searchblog produced "online poker" as a 'keypair' and delivered at least one spam page.) Though it delves deeper, it does so at the tip of the proverbial iceberg, so users should be careful to target their keywords--- because instead of the desired url displaying on the n-th page of results, in CQ it might not display at all without proper initial focus. How focused? A search for "Searchblog" produced only 111 main topics and 65 total results. The keyword index is an added benefit, even if not always complete or "the most meaningful" keywords.

(Hopefully you can click on these images to view the screenshots up-close. Again, this was for a search on "Searchblog" using Google---from initial selection, to results, to focused results.)

This time I'm in Madison, WI. I've never been here before, it's a nice place. I'll be back at it Thursday. Melanie will post a roundup today...

Google Enterprise Professional Program

Enterprise gains a host of professional partners contributing additional services, including data recovery, archival search, intranet development, SAP integration and security. Included among the new partners is MetaCarta. Its addition to Enterprise, for example, will allow users in government, energy and enterprises to retrieve from Earth ‘unstructured content’---such as HTML, Word docs, and emails. For $10,000 a pop, professional subscribers gain access to installation, customization and training for enhanced features in Google Search Appliance and Mini.

Y! Finance better looking, bloggier

Released in an exclusive beta last week and expected for public tests in June, Yahoo is offering a syndicated stock feed with quotes, news and charts for up to 10 companies to blogs and other websites (MicroPersuasion). Paid Content notes that quotes are delayed 15-20 minutes; and Yahoo is still analyzing how to monetize the tool.
Also, the main Y! finance site also gets a little sleeker.

Grilling Eric Schmidt
Resource Shelf and SEW point out an WSJ/CNBC interview with Eric Schmidt in London (in town for the forward-looking Zeitgeist Conference), asking "whether Google is becoming the next Microsoft." Apart from remaining queasy with identification as a media portal, the Google CEO answers questions on the future reach of Google (Asia), its ability to keep its widening grasp together (media), and keep its books in order (click fraud). The two part video and audio copies are available from the WSJ: Part one, Part two.

Moving.com launches
Today Move, Inc. launches its online search platform, Move.com. Move.com says it has the largest, most comprehensive search engine for home and rental listings, and scouting reports (on local schools, maps, photos, affordability calculator, etc.). Together with Realtor.com, Move is the exclusive real estate feeder for AOL and MSN, and the preferred referral for Yahoo. Citing research with thousands of users, the press release says, "Consumers said they wanted everything related to their move in one place, including more photos, virtual tours, maps, and information about neighborhoods." Move hopes to accomplish that by gathering real estate information from sites all over the web.

MySpace choosing its friends carefully
The news from the Financial Times is that MySpace is in talks on integrating search with Google and MSN--- "not Yahoo"---"in a move that would confirm the emergence of Rupert Murdoch’s internet site as a significant new power online" (via Garrett French at SE Lowdown). The FT writes that the search titans themselves are beginning to gravitate towards the ballooning social sites (like MySpace, Facebook) in the market.

These networking hubs have "threatened to tip the balance of power on the internet away from traditional portals and search engines. Their potential to become the places where many young people spend most of their internet time could make them the “gatekeepers”, or the entry point for online activity. The rise of the social networking sites has already forced the established internet powers to revise their views of how new audiences will emerge on the internet."

Rough Type predicts that the Google-MSN shoot-out will play like that for AOL last year, where dominant the search engine won the upper hand. With MySpace so far failing to gain PPC ad profits in proportion to its astounding popularity, and Rough Type thinks its hunting for a search engine that can better monetize with keyword-targeted ads.

+Screenshots of Windows Vista
Can't get enough? Here are some more peaks at PCMag, which is also running a feature on it.

Google's starting its march into video advertising. For a preview, read my Tivo/Peg Perego scenario...

In the coming days, we will be adding click-to-play video ads to the line-up of text, Flash and image ad formats currently supported by the Google content network.

Now, this is the start of something important. It's not on Google.com, yet, but it's going to be all over AdSense, and I bet in Google image search and other content sites (Finance) quite soon.

PS - With Google wooing MySpace, I'm guessing video ads are a big part of the equation...I think, however, Rupert needs to think hard about whether supporting Google is a good idea. I think Yahoo might sell that space better, and, honestly, MySpace is big enough to go it alone as well...

Two items of very related interest today:

1. Wired News Releases Full Text of AT&T NSA Document (Slashdot).

2. Gonzales Says Publishing Leaks Is A Crime (Also Slashdot)

Thank God for outlets like Wired. And best of luck.

Yow! From CNN:

Personal information on 26.5 million veterans was stolen from the home of a data analyst in what appears to have been a random burglary, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson said Monday.

File this under "really f'ing irritating." I have probably 50 or so accounts I use on the web - from Wordpress to MT, Wells Fargo to AdSense to AdWords, to lord knows what. And I tend to mix up my passwords a bit. No, well, a lot. And I am forever screwing up and forgetting my passwords. Sometimes I also forget which email address I used as well, so even getting my damn password back is impossible, given that I have like six working emails.

All of this is made worse by Firefox and its ilk, which remembers passwords for you, so you can forget them entirely until, of course, your browser is borked or you're on a different machine.

Anyway, all this came rushing back to me when I read this post by Xavier at Sun. Seems Meebo users are a lot like me:

Two releases ago, we considered eliminating the “New user?” and “Forgot your password?” links on the front meebo login page. Before doing so, we decided to track how many users clicked on the links. Good thing we didn’t eliminate them - turns out that 11,000+ meebo users depend upon these links daily!

There has got to be a better way.

I get mail from folks from time to time asking me for help finding just the right SEO/SEM consultant. Often they don't want to hire an agency, yet, they're instead looking for an individual who has business experience and marketing smarts, someone whose brain they can pick to help them with very specific goals. I've usually sent these folks to one place or another, hoping it worked out. But now, since I'm also starting down the path of being an AdWords advertiser, I also might be looking for someone like this. So I thought, why not ask my readers, who are the smartest folks out there on these issues, who they think might fit the bill. Here's a typical email, which I got this weekend, from a very senior designer (brand name is taken out...)

As you may know I direct a group of brands, one of which is (very cool, well known brand). We have had considerable success over the last few years on all fronts, yet as you know well, the marketing of brands is constantly shifting with the growing importance of the web.

(Very cool, well known brand) is now embarking on a complete review and plan for its internet strategy, and one component that is needed urgently is great consultancy on its search engine optimization and key word search marketing plans.


Could you recommend who I am our team could work with to develop these plans? I don't think this is an agency but a person/consultant for whom this work would be a day or so of consultancy, then leading to a more regular (one day a month) consultancy. If this person then leads us to an agency (we have a media agency at present doing regular media) for this piece then that is fine, or even to the hiring inside the company of a person or people around the constant need to be first and best in class in this category.

So, if you have ideas for who might fit this bill, email me, or post in the comments. Thanks!

Microsoft Live (Search) Desktop
Microsoft announced its version of an integrated-search desktop that can scour the desktop, corporate network and internet. It's now available to download. "Windows Live Search" is the tentative title, but the product is apparently separate from the other beta by the same name, which is internet-only search. As Geeking with Greg points out, it sounds very similar to Google’s Desktop Search, a imitation Googler VPs told the AP they long expected.
Google Notebook Live
Google Notebook went live in the labs earlier this week. Downloading the Notebook extension places a shortcut tool (displayed in the bottom right of the browser) with which to scrapbook pages, links, and notes. (One can also login and begin playing with the capture and note-taking tools without the extension, but it remains a bit awkward.)
A Faster, Even Viral Google Video
After an inauspicious start (trumped by YouTube), Google Video is changing gears. Users can now feed their videos directly online, eschewing the desktop upload program and editorial submission time-lag. That's exactly why YouTube ran ahead, and that's why Google is responding.
And amid the popularity of the promotional DaVinci Code game (but the movie is getting hammered), Google is trying a viral video marketing venture with the new movie The Break-up. In addition to offering previews, Google is hosting a page where users can share digital shorts of their own humorous trips to splitsville. (John here - does this feel...well...dumb to anyone else?)
Java-to-AJAX Toolkit (for Programmers, with Love from Google)
Google releases the Web Toolkit (Beta) free to the public. The toolkit aims to assist in coding dynamic web applications (like Gmail) by allowing programmers to develop AJAX tools in Java. Helping to navigate a myriad of browser eccentricities, the toolkit features include retaining full Java debugging support for ultimately AJAX apps.
Notebook Snooping
ZDnet goes snooping about the Google Notebook source code and finds some tantalizing bits, or rather hanging questions: Integration with Gmail? Third-party add-ons? Options like in Google Page Creator? (Via Lenssen who also points to a Achewood Cartoon on Google.)
StumbleUpon new sites
StumbleUpon, launched new features early last week, lets users wander through new websites recommended from like-minded users. Still in trial mode, Stumble just added photo, video and Wikipedia stumbling to its Firefox extension. Recently moved to San Francisco from Canada, the start-up just completed an angel round of funding with big tech names. Investor Mitch Kapor remarked in the press release, "Search when you know just what you're looking for, stumble when you don't."
Job Trends at Yahoo, Google
Tracked by the Swiss research group UBS: Google job growth is still explosive--new positions composing 27% of its current headcount, compared with 23% last year--while Yahoo's has flat-lined (from 12% to 8%). More at GigaOm.
A little innovation at the business school
On the online business journal Knowledge@Wharton, Wharton is internally converting search terms into article labels. Terms that result in an article selection automatically become tags in the related articles box and link to all similar articles. (tip from Kurt Oeler)
List of New Search Patents
...Including eight from Microsoft, two from Yahoo, and two from IBM. From Resource Shelf
Small Biz Bloggers Wanted
Jan Jantsesh is looking for bloggers to join the growing channel network at Duct Tape Marketing. See his post for details.

Reader JG notes this disturbing incident, an echo of my privacy scenario post.

Michael Michalski worked for Allegheny County, Pa., as an emergency dispatcher. He began running searches on the internal computer network and databases to locate his former girlfriend...A supervisor... became aware of Michalski's misuse of government databases and placed him on a deferred suspension....Because he still had access to the databases before his suspension began, Michalski continued to gain unauthorized access to personal information about Phillips....Then, while on suspension, Michalski phoned his co-workers at the call center, who allegedly helped him continue the database lookups even though they were aware it was for an illicit purpose.

On Oct. 29... the supervisor met with Michalski and confronted him...Later that day, Michalski shot and killed his ex-girlfriend, Ferderbar, and her new boyfriend, Phillips, according to a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article.

Searchblog readers pretty much made Web 2.0 what it is, at least for me....you came and supported the ideas, speakers, and companies, and you joined a conversation that I find one of most stimulating in the industry.

This year promises to be our best yet, and I know that sounds, well, predictable. But so many forces are coming together, and there's so much to talk about, it can't help but be one hell of a dialog.

Today the site is open for registration. If you've been before, or were on the original invite list from last year, you've already gotten your invite. If you didn't get one, or have changed your email, or just want to come for the first time, head here and request an invite, and tell them you came from Searchblog when you do (there's a place to do that).

In the next few months I'll be asking all of you for input on speakers, topics, and Launchpad companies (submit yours here!), just as I did last year. So far, we've signed up a pretty good group of initial speakers, including Jeff Bezos, Eric Kleptone, Jon Miller, Mark Zuckerberg, Arthur Sulzberger, and many more.

I'm interviewing Jeff Weiner, who runs Yahoo Search & Marketplace, tomorrow in Detroit. So Yahoo's analyst day this week is of keen interest. Here are some thoughts from across the web:

Cnet: Focuses on the new ad system, covered here earlier. "Yahoo's new ad system is designed to let marketers target prospective consumers not only by the search terms the people use, but also by their demographics, location and what they do on other areas of the Yahoo network, executives said.

The system, scheduled to launch in the U.S. in the third quarter, offers enhanced ease of use, advanced testing features, geo-targeting and automated analytics, Tim Cadogan, vice president of search, said during the company's analyst day in San Francisco on Wednesday. "

Paid Content: A round up as well, starting with Llyod Braun's pushing user generated content.

SEW rounded it all up, here's their coverage of Jeff's talk. Jeff's all about social search, Answers, etc. Innaresting.

I'm traveling for the balance of the week. We'll try to keep the updates coming...

This news, from TechDirt, reminds me of the positive brand burnish Google got by standing up to the DOJ. Well done, Qwest.

One of the interesting items to emerge from the growing NSA data-monitoring scandal is that the telecoms weren't compelled to go along with the government and that one company, Qwest, refused to participate. Now the company, which had been a laggard and on the receiving end of many customer complaints, is experiencing a surge in customer appreciation from those opposed to the NSA program.

"Their company motto is 'Don't Be Evil.' It's not as if they have a death ray or something." Thanks KK.

ReadWrite has the write up. In short: It's very driven by search, at the top, and content, in the center, with loads o ajax-y goodness.

I logged in today to find that a bunch of my keywords were "inactive" due to low bids. Google helpfully suggested new bid levels at 30- to 3,000-percent higher bids so as to re-activate my now derelict keywords.

I noticed that some of the inactive keywords were the ones that were doing the best for me - at least, they are important to be associated with the FM brand, were getting a fair number of impressions, and a decent clickthrough rate. They included the names of some of my most popular blogs in the FM network. Hmmm, I wondered. Competition for these site's keywords must be heating up, and my (admittedly) lowball bid must be getting bumped off the list.

So I fired up Google and entered the keywords to see who was bumping me off - I wondered if perhaps FM's competition was doing it.

Guess what? In several cases (including Dooce and Metafilter), no one else is bidding for the term. In many others (including the name of this blog), only one was bidding, or in some cases two - but by no means was the term "full up" with ads.

This is very odd to me. No one is competing for the Adwords I want to buy, but yet Google was telling me to raise my bid as much as 15 times my original price - a price that was working fine just a day or so ago.

Can anyone enlighten me as to why? Am I missing something obvious? It sure feels, well, off. Is someone gaming me? Is Google? Or is this the way the company gets you to pay the equivalent of a phantom CPM - for getting a lot of impressions, but not getting a high enough click through rate? Innaresting....

Update: Google has pointed me to this post...

AdWords on Google Base

The Google Base Blog announced that users can now use AdWords ads to drive traffic to their Base listings, automatically geo-targeted with the keywords targeting based on the ad copy (screenshots, via SEW).

SELowdown opines, "So let me get this straight: Give us content to index through Base. Pay us to advertise this Base content in Google searches. Well I guess that's not THAT different from Google's current model..."

Conversely happy with the new union, VoidStar recommends eBay join Words-Base to rectify its own keyword targeting. Coincidentally, Forbes today reports about Google "increasingly infringing on eBay's territory and limiting the online auctioneer's growth potential, at least in the near term, according to Cowen & Co. analyst Jim Friedland."
The article continues:

While the new Google Base service, a free database of product listings, has not become a significant driver of sales for e-commerce companies as of yet, 50% of the conference attendees said they have started to list products on the database. Advertisers that use Google keywords benefit from a 70% click-through rate, versus Yahoo!'s 18% and Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) MSN's 8%, according to Friedland...Friedland also found that more and more small- and medium-sized businesses' market resources are being directed away from eBay to Google AdWords and Google Base.

Google, Nokia Team-up for Mobile Search
A formal announcement is expected Tuesday of Google search powering the new Nokia, reports the WSJ (via CIO Tech Informer). The forthcoming 770 Internet Tablet allows simultaneous voice or IM alongside web surfing. It will be Google's first foray into mobile telephone deals, which Google has made clear is the new territory its staking out. Connecting through the interenet rather than cellular signals, the Tablet provides Google Talk wherever there is wifi--making service spottier but cheaper, SeattlePI notes.

The WSJ: Because it’s based on short-range Wi-Fi technology, the device is not a cell phone...It’s a bit larger than the average PDA, and it features a high-resolution screen designed specifically for browsing the Internet.

Vista Cleared by DOJ
Despite Google's accusation that Visa's default to MSN Search (in absense of pre-set preferences) is unfair, the DOJ determined Friday MS has done no harm. CNet: As part of its status report on Microsoft's antitrust compliance, the Justice Department said that it had reviewed the search box and concluded that Microsoft's implementation "respects users' and (computer makers') default choices and is easily changed."

Web 2.0 Commencement
Tim O'Reilly, giving the commencement speech for the UC Berkeley School of Information this past Saturday (John gave it last year), talked about defining Web 2.0 The full transcript is on O'Reilly's site, Geeking with Greg excerpts:

The internet as platform. What does that mean? ...It's as simple as this: the secret of success in the networked era is to create or leverage network effects... When we first began thinking about Web 2.0, we asked ourselves what distinguished the companies that survived the dotcom bust from those that failed. And we came up with the surprising observation that in one way or another, each of them was good at harnessing user contributions, applying some of the same insights to consumer applications that leading edge software developers have applied to open source software projects like Linux.

A true Web 2.0 application is one that gets better the more people use it. Google gets smarter every time someone makes a link on the web. Google gets smarter every time someone makes a search. It gets smarter every time someone clicks on an ad. And it immediately acts on that information to improve the experience for everyone else.

It's for this reason that I argue that the real heart of Web 2.0 is harnessing collective intelligence. ...The world of Web 2.0 *can* be one in which we share our knowledge and insights, filter the news for each other, find out obscure facts, and make each other smarter and more responsive. We can instrument the world so it becomes somethng like a giant, responsive organism.

GigaOm also recently posted some new thoughts on Web 2.0 as meme, mainstream misunderstanding, and an enterprise.

Does Google Desktop "improve search"?
Jeremy Zawodny doesn't buy the message from Marrissa:

We're told that Google Desktop 4 improves search, but that's not backed up by any evidence at all. Instead, we're presented with a non-sequitur about gadgets you can use to increase your day to day information overload.

A Googley Economist Article
The running gag in a new Economist article was whether Google has become the new Microsoft. Though an excellent article, most of it overviews Google's growth and culture with which Seachblog readers are already familiar, so just a few the highlights here. Google recently sent its first lobbyists to Washington, DC. Its decision to build an “evil scale” to help it devise its China strategy was more unusual, but its hiring of Al Gore, a former American vice-president, to aid the process, was just the kind of thing that old-fashioned empire-building firms do all the time.

The closing graph:
Google thus finds itself at a defining moment. There are plenty of people within the company who want it to play the power game. “The folks who are closest to Larry and Sergey are very, very worried about Microsoft, as well they should be,” says John Battelle, the author of a blog and a book on Google. Yet the company's founders themselves may not be prepared to drop their idealism and their faith in their own mathematical genius.

Quote of the article: "Google seems to use betas as dogs sprinkle trees—so that rivals know where it is."

DOJ Moves to Close EFF Complaint
EFF writes: Early Saturday morning, in the darkest hours of the night, the Department of Justice made good its threat to file a motion to dismiss our class-action lawsuit against AT&T, contending that AT&T's collaboration with the NSA's massive and illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans' communications (which violates the law and the privacy of its customers)--despite being front page news throughout the United States and the subject of government press conferences and Congressional hearings--is a state secret. The motion was accompanied by declarations by Lieutenant General Keith B. Alexander, Director, National Security Agency and John D. Negroponte, Director of National Intelligence. We will vigorously oppose this motion. Donate to EFF and help stop the illegal spying!

BB points to a fellow who has found the most expensive AdWord keywords, and is composing poetry from them. I'm fond of the Lasik surgery entry.

Are you worried yet?

As I've pointed out many times, Bill Gross, the man behind Snap (and Goto/Overture and about 25 other search related companies) is not one to take lightly. When Snap launched, I watched closely, and while many of its features were admirable (the transparency, for one, and later, the CPA model, for another), it never quite got enough lift under its wings, at least in its first year.

Today Snap is relaunching as a "broadband search engine." That means, it's heavy on Ajax features, clustering, and related results, among other things. It certainly is a new look. The results include large thumbnails of prospective pages, for example, and a suggested terms autocomplete feature (not unlike Google Suggest). In fact, there are tons of features that have been tried in various other places, but never have so many been implemented in one place at one time. It's an attempt to fight one's way out of the single search box interface, and whether it works or not, it's worth a look. The theory is sound - which is usually the case with Gross's companies - but often he's ahead of the market.

My quick take is that I'm so used to Google's dominant interface, I initially got lost using Snap. It takes some time to get the hang of it. One thing that I want to do is click through directly to the site, but instead, I'm in a window on the right. There's much to think about here - it feels more like search inside a multi-column RSS reader like Shrook, oddly. You can ask Snap to show you a new window, which is good.

Snap is also rethinking relevance by licensing ISP clickstream data and feeding it back into its relevance engine. This to me is where the really interesting stuff lies. It's a way to fight spam - folks tend not to spend a lot of time visiting spammy sites - and, in an ideal world, provides a potentially better set of results than simple link analysis.

The Snap model incorporates paid inclusion and pay per action, and I think this may be where it falls down. While this is certainly an innovation in the affiliate/adsense spam market, it's also open to charges of blurring the lines, which was exactly the problem with Goto when it launched. We'll see.

Snap is promoting its new engine and its launch on Searchblog, among many other sites. As part of that promotion, I've agreed to head over to Snap's blog and include my own ideas in their "Other Way to Launch" contest. I'll be doing that soon, and will add the link here so you can see what I wrote.

I'm honored to hear that The Search is up for a Loeb, which is the most prestigious award in business journalism. But the field is quite competitive, and I'm just thrilled to be among the other fine books noted. (Somehow, I sense The World Is Flat will sweep...!)

UPDATE: Well, this is embarrassing, but my publisher told me I was a finalist, along with about ten other books, but now the release is out, and only three are on it, and The Search ain't one of them. I guess I was given bad info. Sigh.

Read Kevin Kelly's excellent piece (NYT Sunday Mag) on how books will change forever. I'll be back with more on it soon...

Y! Answers Beta No More
Yahoo Answers plans to drop its beta tag on Monday. Since the launch in December 2005, Yahoo says its amassed a library of over 10 million Answers and 7.2 million unique users.

Collexis Fingerprints
Yet another search service--but wait, Collexis claims individuality for "helping to get your job done by thinking for you."
Instead of caching full pages, Collexis crawls for "Fingerprints" of content based on a thesaurus-rich text analysis that can access live pages, archives, and various other types of files.

"The system can create a fingerprint for each piece of text that contains relevant information, such as competence sheets, project descriptions or web pages. The fingerprinting process makes use of a structure of professional terminology of a particular field (essentially a thesaurus). By doing so it embodies the way humans understand those terms and concepts."

Collexis is a tailored industry search for government, university and medical research, pharmaceuticals, and banking and finance. Making data accessible and easy to manipulate will have nice implications for analysts and experts in all those fields, but Collexis also aims to make "it easy to use for even the most non-technical user."

Google Execs Sell Lots of Stock
According to the SF Chron (via GoogleSystem), 14 Google Execs sold $4.4 billion in stocks last year and this year a dozen have sold $1.9 billion. "That includes founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, each of whom sold about $1.3 billion worth of stock." They were actually asked about this at Google Day and Brin responded that like any investor it's wise to diversify but that he intends to keep the vast majority of his stock "forever." Based on the insider stock trade filing, the Chron also finds that of the $11.3 billion in personal income tax receipts California pulled in April, approximately an eighth or more derived from Googlers.

Speaking of MySpace...
Following-up John's last post on the spike of hits from MySpace to Google, Paul Boutin has an article in Slate on why MySpace, as well as YouTube are pulling in the critical mass. Talking about the recent popularity stats on domains, which the WashPost posted, Boutin writes: I was skeptical when I heard how huge video-sharing hub YouTube and social-networking hotspot MySpace have become. YouTube claims 40 million plays a day, up from 35 million just a week ago. The answer he comes to is that the two social mega-hubs make it too easy to resist for non-geeks, making the web: "The secret to success is to make everything one-button easy, then get out of the way."

Boutin also complains that Google Video (along with others) fall short by specializing the tools---in his words, presuming they know what users want--whereas MySpace gives you everything in one personalized space. "MySpace isn't that much easier to use than Friendster, or than other shared-user-content sites like Flickr (photo sharing), del.icio.us (bookmarks), or Digg (tech news). But it mixes multiple publishing models—blogs, photos, music, videos, friend networks—into one personal space. Most important, it doesn't presume to know what your goals are." In retrospect from Press Day, it's a safe bet that the new Co-op exchange of social tags will include video soon enough.
Withdrawing the Branch from Olive
Despite rumors the past few weeks that Google was going to buy Olive for $75 million, after looking the software company up and down in a week of intensive interviews Google then walked away. Olive software converts various data files (like PDFs, microfilm) into xml, accessible to search.

Is it a coincidence that a large portion of Olive's employes are based in Israel and Google is opening new offices in Israel? Silicon Beat muses: Is Google turning into a Microsoft? Checking out the goods, and then going back and building it themselves? Or hiring away the better employees? Here's what one person said: "Google learned a LOT about Olive... everything."

VLAB Ad Forum on Ad Models
VLAB (the MIT-Stanford Venture Lab) is hosting a forum next Tuesday on new ad models. Hosted by Mark Kvamme from Sequoia, the startups Accomplice and Root Markets will talk about the dynamic of their models, alonside panelists from Carat Fusion, AdBrite and Google AdSense.

Indeed, the First PPC Job Search
Yesterday, Indeed announced the formal launch of its the first pay-per-click job advertising network. Unlike the Google and Yahoo PPC models, advertisers in Indeed don't pick and buy keywords or write copy. Instead, offering a little wiggle room for advertisers, Indeed relies on the job descriptions to place relevant ads beside search results.

ICANN Rejects .xxx
The decision was considered by many internet freedom advocates as a test case for ICANN's indepdence from US control, the Reuters report. Over 1000 Diggers have tagged the ICANN announcement; and ICANN Watch is unsurprisingly not happy: "I would say that .xxx was a lousy idea, but that the people behind it followed all the rules and still lost -- but that would suggest that there are rules."

Google Notebook Screenshots
Some pre-release screen shots of Notebook are on Flickr thanks to EricaJoy.

Yahoo CEO Pines for Google
Yahoo Chief Terry Semel tells The New Yorker his biggest mistake since 2001 was not purchasing the fledgling Google...although it seems he did not because Brin and Page would not sell. CNet notes that though this "story may have been told before, but it's still a delight to hear from Semel's lips."

Wow. I love infoporn. I have a hunch that Mr. Murdoch is thinking hard about this graph:

From the Hitwise blog: The chart (above) illustrates the percentage upstream from myspace.com to Google.
Going back to the beginning of last year myspace provided less than 1% of all Google traffic.
While myspace.com still doesn't have its own search offering, the shear volume of traffic sent to external search engines could be directed internally with the right acquisition and promotion of its own search offering.

There are a lot of other insights in the piece. I've had MySpace again on my mind after talking Weds with Jon Miller, CEO of AOL. My full interview with him will be up on B2.0 in about a month, but the thing that struck me was how Miller mentioned MySpace in the same breath as Google, AOL, Yahoo, eBay, and Amazon. It had made it into the majors as far as he was concerned, because it owned the social networking space. And why, again, might Google launch Co-op, and AOL AIM Pages? Indeed....

Remember the DaVinci code/Google hookup around Easter? (Nathan has a round up of where things stand with the puzzles, etc. here. He apparently is one of 10,000 folks who completed the 24 puzzles and is in the "finals.")

Anyway, the folks at Hitwise sent me an analysis of what a link on Google SERPs (along with some juicy homepage promo) will do for a site like Sony Pictures. Check out this graph:

Bam!

Now, sure, DaVinci Code got a lot of PR at the same time, so maybe this is not just Google? They isolated engine traffic too, here's Google:

More at the Hitwise blog.

Ben Schachter of UBS provided me with an analysis of Comscore's April numbers. Now, we all know that there are issues with any panel based study, but the big guys are pretty apples to apples. It's very interesting to see how three of the top ten are really newcomers in the past few years - Myspace, Facebook, and Craigslist (not new, but new to the big leagues). The analysis is not available on the web, so if you want it, I've loaded it up here.

From the summary:

Top Ten Sites (Page Views)
1) Yahoo!, 2) MYSPACE.COM, 3) MSN-Microsoft, 4) Time Warner Network, 5)
eBay, 6) Google, 7) FACEBOOK.COM, 8) Viacom Online, 9) Craigslist, and 10)
Comcast. Our tracking index of the top 100 sites by page views was up 7% m/m.

Top Ten Sites (Unique Visitors)
1) Yahoo!, 2) MSN-Microsoft, 3) Time Warner Network, 4) Google Sites, 5)
eBay, 6) Ask Jeeves, 7) Amazon, 8) MYSPACE.COM, 9) New York Times
Digital, 10) and Verizon Communications.

Key Points
We note that Craigslist, MySpace, and Facebook continued to grow. These three
sites average double the average page views of the next closest site.

A few things that strike me as we digest all the news yesterday (webcast). (PS, Google's shareholder meeting is going on now...)

1. A renewed focus on search (yes, we are still about search, says Marissa in a new blog post). This was a clear message: We differentiate on search, we lead in search, we live by search. Clearly, the competitive differentiation was important to get across.

2. An expansion of what search means. With Trends, Google is finally starting to mine the Database of Intentions for the obvious value it contains. With Co-Op, it's starting to mine intentional clickstream. These two signals are critical to advances in search.

3. An attempt to remind an increasingly querlous press corps of what makes Google special. The corny video, the explanation of how Google works, the reminders about the founder's letter, the homey anecdotes about innovation in omlette preparation - all designed to strengthen the company's image as unique in the field.

4. A clear nod toward increased competition and a move into the messy world of people over machines. Mainstream press coverage of the announcements focused on Schmidt's claim that the market is not a winner take all world (and I heard the same from Jonathan Miller of AOL yesterday when we met). But the fact is, Google must play where the others play, and more "web 2.0" apps like social search (Co Op), bookmarking (Notebook) and user generated content (Co Op, Base, Finance, and Notebook) are clear moves into worlds where Yahoo, Ebay and Amazon have stronger plays. (Gary calls Co-Op "Google Base for Web Pages" - a nice observation.)

5. Overall, the stuff Google showed was interesting, but not particularly unique. Neat hacks, pointers to future directions, but not...major. But is that required for a press event? Nah.

I'll comment on the new products shortly, but here's Melanie's liveblog of Google Press Day from yesterday.

First a quick highlight of the day's launches:

* Google Co-op: A community site-tagging system that shapes Google's recommended search refinements based on selected users' votes (tags, rankings and comments).

"It works just like a Grocery co-op," says Marissa Mayer. Registered users mark trustworthy, expert sites and label them into categories--such as health, influenza, or advice for patients. Then community members can subscribe to other users' labels. In Co-op you can view the CDC's profile, see the labels it's participating on, and who has subscribed (with pictures). Should be up in the labs within hours. Currently, the labs version has six featured subscribers in the directory, including Digg (one of Federated Media's affiliated sites), Winspectator, Fandago, People, Open Table, Design Assistant at SouthernLiving.com, within four categories, Health, Information, News, and Travel.

* Google Trends: Charts the competing popularity of two search terms (based on the volume of a portion of Google traffic). The Trends chronology also associates spikes in searches with some events that might contribute, and describes the origin of the searches by relevant factors, like region, language, and city.

What is the search pattern for the terms Google versus Yahoo, in Google's cache? "We're giving you the keys to the Zeitgeist kingdom, is basically what we're doing here," says Jonathan Rosenberg. Searching for "equinox, full moon, solstice," Trends shows the temporal pattern. "Surfing" has geographic variables. Great monetary implications of trends in geographies, where ad campaigns. "The age old question," Rosenberg asks, "Boxers or Briefs? Boxers are more popular, apparently."

*Ajax-Rich Desktop:
In Google personalized homepage, Gadget applications area added like a media player, weather update and an animated toy plant that blooms with mouse attention. A recommendation engine built into Google desktop provides suggetions based on your "internal" (?) cached search history. So, for example, if you frequently query for flights, it might recommend you add an airfare tracker widget. (For Mac users, it's like a live, Google-integrated dashboard widgets.)

* Google Notebook
Available in the Labs next week, with a google account and plug-in installed, Notebook allows users to take notes while you're searching, saving snippets of text, images and links (similar to Scrapbook).

* (Not) Health: Oh yeah, and no health yet! Myers acknowledged the rush of rumors she stirred, but no official release. From the day's previews though, it looks like the crux of Google Health will be the refined search for select medical-related searches that popped up in intermittent trial screen shots earlier last week and is semi-finctional now.

PRESS DAY HAPPENINGS:
Google Press Day was an excellent opportunity to consider public relations lingo and succumb to the little luxuries of the welcome committee. "We know the wireless doesn't work. We're fixing it," beamed Elliot Schrage, VP, Global Communications & Public Affairs. (Om Malik blogs: I am going to try and live blog the Google press day event. It is packed room, and tons of journalists are in the room. Despite all that, we are all disconnected. There is a problem with the WiFi and there is no connection. I am posting this from my crackberry.) I must be feeling lucky, because I'm the only one with a press pass who seems to be able to get online (finally, value-add).

The main cafe, Charlie's, is swathed in white fabric imprinted with the Google logo in black text, is packed with about 250 visitors. With club music playing overhead, the main display offers up everyone's favorite wall covering, a running stream of live search terms. The lights dim. The screen rolls with a year of Google Highlights: Earth, Talk, Mobile, Aps, 22 new global offices, famous Googler faces, Google.cn, mag covers, SF picks for new wifi...

After intros by Schrage with a "A Note From Our Lawyers" looming on the screen overhead ("forward-looking statements," securities exchange, blah blah), Eric Schmidt opened with commentary on the message of the day: Search is still the core focus of Google. He didn't reveal any secrets behind PageRank like a hidden integration of borrowed Yahoo results, but he did test the journalist crowd's ability to memorize the fundamentals of the schpiel (however true): Google is being open and testing limits, in particular now, fostering the "localization of our business around the world."

Eric Schmidt:
(In paraphrased/broken quotes): " Search is still the central thing in which you do anything with all this information....turning power relationships on its head......end users are driving that and I think they're still not satisfied. And I hope to show you search is still the main way of solving all of that. Search has produced great spin-offs: ajax, LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL Perl/PHP/Python), mash-ups. Search is the inevitable outcome---"
"There's a magical moment when you type something into google and say 'wow, that's something cool/new."
"The web, at least, is growing faster that Moore's law...with the web 2.0 model, now we can make money out of it. [Search] advertising is very successful now." (NB: that must be a sore point in a room full or print reporters).

How Google Runs:
1. 70-20-10 Principle: By the most recent analysis, Google is not as high as 70% in the core of search/ads, so now they're reshifting the focus again to adjust (in other words, we're doing more search again...). The 20% represents Google's bargain with technical people, allowing them to roam free to encourage creativity---where all the most interesting products emerge. The 10% is for wacky ideas that might not work out but feel worth pursuing.
2. An "exhaustive drama of arguments and reviews" in "ceaseless GPS [Google Product Strategy] reviews---so much that it's produced a recent internal traffic jam on the servers with so many such teams."
3. A monthly formal revenue force and reordering around product investment.

"The goal is to systematize anything...The only way to deal with the growth in scale, is a systematic approach to each and everything we do...Google's making significant storage/computing capacity investments, reusing and combing data from one application to another...."

On Competition: Yahoo, MSN
The competition is healthy and but the competition is "not emphasizing the 70%" i.e. SEARCH, "which is what users want," says Schmidt. With the partners--AOL, eBay-- collaboration is growing: "[It's] not just the IT industry anymore, it's an information industry of hundreds of millions of people. There's room for hundred of companies emphasizing different stuff....."

More Schmidt Snippets:
Big Issues: the role of government, the regulatory structure of the Internet.
Copyright: We're "indexing, note, not reproducing, the world's books."
Rules of the Internet: The first rule of the internet: People have a lot to say...All user generated info all the time...Expertise will transition in our lifetime from learned information to learning information------this is a big shift (add full quote)"
Factoid: The search numbers in mobile (cell, treo, blackberry) are more than three times in use than persona computers. Mobile presents interesting challenges, as well as potential, because the user experience is "more as finding than generalized searching----because of the very small screens"

The Future of Search:
What users want is "serendipity---tell me what I'm typing....Information businesses have predictive power and make a business out of this focus of information that we are creating.... It [search] will work as a continuous cycle, more search, more advertising, more innovators... the model is designed to scale to no boundary...I'm sure there are limits, but we don't see them today..."

Spam
Comment spam is not an issue in determining PR, but link exchanges/farms are still an issue---and to some extent there are valid (i.e. Berkeley and Stanford trade links)--but they're developing new technologies to deal with interlinked sites.
A hard question: "How do I know if a change in the ranking function is good or bad?" Answer: If a algorithm change can make 40% of results better, leaves 40% the same, and hurts 20% of words---What should we do? We do it. "No change we make is going to make 100% of the queries better," but the improvements are typically small.
FACTOID: More than 1/2 of Google queries come from outside the US.

Localization
There are more than 15,000 engineers/Googlers: a "global mindset, local focus."
Speakers: Omid Kordestani, senior vp, global sales and business development, Nikesh Arora, vp Eurpoean Ops., Adam Freed, Dir. Product management, Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, vp, Asia Pacific and Latin Amaerican Operations.
Google is growin "in parrallel rather than sequentially... continuing expansion, [world-wide offices have] gone from zero to 120 in record time...[Google is] operating in different government and regulatory environments," a complex job.

Google Maps launched in Asia after the US, and just last week in Europe. "Most [of Google Maps Asia was] built outside Mountain View---on the ground, present in these countries... [providing] deeply local, unique in culture and content, books, video, etc. orginating from there. And Google Finance originated in Bangalore."

How Google Saved My Life: The Video
A deluge of warm images and soft words over the screen....
The parents of infant twins did a google search on mobile when the newborns had an illness. "Thanks to Google, we went from needing this major proceedure for our newborn, to being able to go home." Awwww..... The writer with a voice of confidence: "As an author---[Google] leveled the playing field" allowing me to compete with the bestsellers. The White Coat hugging a picture of a pink baby to her chest says, "Health care providers don't know enough about rare diseases...Essentially Google saved her life because she had been sent without any other help from her local physicians." Another user found 30MinuteSeder.com: "Google saved me two and half hours"!
The press thought this was pretty corny...

Next Speakers: Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior VP, Product Manager & Marisa Mayer, VP Search Products and User Experience

Innovation Process
A bit on how Google does what it does: Still continually inspired by the founders' S1 letter; offices at the googleplex are actually patterned after the space of the original garage Page and Brin worked in---with three to a cubicle. Pushing the analogy that innovation permeates every facet of the plex, Rosenberg uses the cafeteria as an example--where hungry Googlers can choose their own ingredients then hand them off to the cook who will whip it up into an omelette.
Maps has kicked off a whole new spin-off of programming, the ajax paradigm.
Mayers highlights the core components of Search Experience: 1. comprehensiveness: Google believes it has 3x as many pages versus its competitors' indexes. 2. Relevance: provided by adding dozens of tweaks in algorithm. 3. Speed. 4. User experience.

Advertising hopes to increase relevance---with site targeting, content bidding, position preference near---increasing its hold on the "longtail." For instance, Local delivers click-to-call in map ads---in bringing it "closer to a transaction" because the user is "engaged in phone call with vendor."

Scaling Free Innovations
Starting with the core of Search/Ads, the larger spectrum is Communications (like Gmail and Talk), then broadens to Free products (Earth, Picasa, Blogger, Print).

Innovation, Not Instant Perfection
"And because it's free, you shouldn't expect it to be perfect," says Mayer. She said Google launches early and often, pushing out to public sphere, then seeing what the public thinks of it, then improve it. Mayer charted the increasing pace of innovation thus far, noting that inside of a year, Feb-Jan, there were several iterations of Google video and improved services. Mayer suggests to keep watch for a new G-Desktop launch soon---if the engineering team can keep its current pace. With all the focus on innovation, Mayer goes out of her way (as others do) to reiterate that the focus remains extant and centered on search. Using Mobile, Rosenberg walks through finding a Bed & Breakfast in Mountain View, results delivering what credit cards they take and rates.

The Q&A
The measured reservation of the whole day reached its apex in the Q&A when Brin and Page unexpectedly dropped in along side Schmidt and Schrage.
Q: Is Google becoming a Bureaucracy? A: A no-answer answer.
Things only got lively when the BBC reporter asked Brin and Page if a) they had a Peter Pan complex and wished their company was still small, and b) they felt like taking flight and living-off their riches. It was almost another no-answer answer, until Page stepped in with a great response reflecting Google's evolution and self-awareness today.
A snippet: We realized that search was "too meaningful to the world for a small company to really succeed in that.... so in order to really fulfill that mission we had to grow....[Google] really is changing the world, and to do that we really have to be really big."

Much to report, will have a longer post Thurs. Was offline much of today, back at it soon...

A nice piece of reporting by Susan K. that I had not heard about: eBay and Google competing to build a media industry-spec'd platform (not AdWords....).

From it:

A consortium of some of the biggest advertisers in the United States has plans to move the ad industry out the era of the cattle exchange and into the internet age. They’re looking for someone to build an ADSDAQ — an online exchange similar to the NASDAQ where advertisers and media owners can trade.

Google and eBay are the front runners right now — and eBay has the edge. At stake is a cut of the $800 billion total advertising market. Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently boasted that he expects to get his fingers in every piece of it.

Today, at a conference of the Association of National Advertisers, this group, led by Julie Roehm of Wal-Mart, asked ANA members to put up $50 million to test a trading system for traditional media.

Howard Rosenberg, director of trading platforms for eBay, was on hand to demonstrate such a system that eBay has ready to go.

As far as I can tell, Google's approach is to extend AdWords into other media (image/cpm, video ads, etc.) but eBay would build this to the spec of the media industry, and for them. More of a "pure play" is how one source put it. Innaresting.

I'm still not used to the idea that my stuff at Business 2.0 is not behind a paywall. But it ain't. Here's my interview with Ray Ozzie. From it:

When the deal went down, people wondered, Was it Groove that was getting acquired, or was it Ray Ozzie?

The answer's "Yes."

At such a big company, there's so much to tackle. What did you do first?

The first few months I spent doing what anyone who sells a company should do - make sure the acquiring party doesn't screw up the acquisition. Fortunately the culture that we had built at Groove matched the Microsoft Office development culture, and Groove will be part of Office moving forward. After a few months, I started spending a lot more time in Redmond. Before doing anything, I just wanted to get to know people and understand the map of projects. It's very broad. Every organization is the product of its leaders and its culture and the negative and positive things that have happened to it over time. So I tried to just learn from people there.

The Microsoft culture is famous for its bureaucracy. People joke about how hard it is to get battleship Microsoft to tack. Did you find that to be true?

It's true in different ways in different parts of the company. The Windows organization has completely different processes than the Office side, which is completely different than MSN. The MSN culture is younger they're used to more rapid turnaround in getting their products out. Both the Windows and Office sides ship a product with a mentality of 10-year support. The MSN side puts code into an Internet ecosystem where people don't expect 10-year support. Users expect to be on the latest version all the time.

What's different at Microsoft?.....

Microsoft (Finally) Landing on the Map
The acquisition of the mapping and 3-D imaging company Vexcel brings Microsoft into the running with Google and Yahoo Maps.

But MS has bigger plans. SenseWeb is MS’s project to provide real-time maps that integrate localized data like gas prices, traffic reports, and even average wait time for restaurants. MIT’s TechReview notes that while other research projects—at Berkeley, MIT, Stanford—also aim at including variable data into maps (irregularly updated), SenseWeb alone is attempting to create up-to-the-minute updated results specific to a user-defined area. The technology requires a feed of incoming data from individuals and auto-detecting equipment (currently underserved):
One challenge for the SenseWeb project will be making the different types of information pulled into its database consistent enough to analyze and sort, says Samuel Madden, professor of computer science at MIT. For instance, there would need to be standard units for temperatures. "As soon as you start integrating all this data, you can imagine that weird things will happen," he says. "It's really a challenge to build tools that work with generic data and to come up with a way that anyone can publish their information."

Microsoft has gone so far as to add favorite celebrity sites to its maps. CelebFavorites signed Alex Rodriguez, for example. All this localized personal search in maps leads Geeking with Greg to fancy Search without Searching.

Testing Ads on Earth
In other Map News, Google Earth is again showing AdSense Ads in Earth (image above left), reports RadioactiveYak and Ogle Earth.

Drum-roll on G-Health…
Drawing closer to the expected release of Google Health on Wednesday, some fodder for the excitement:
Screen shots of targeted health screen results generated by Nico; SEW wonders aloud if this preview is G-health or if we should expect more; Blogscoped notes a minor error; Garrett Rodgers thinks this test site is more-or-less G-health and voices some cautious disappointment:
Basically, Google Health is what I expected — an enhanced way to search for health related material. Lots of people were hoping for a more feature-rich product (including myself) but that's not usually how Google operates. They like to see and hear what people want before they spend time developing what they think people want — this is how they get things done so quickly.

MS Ads Imbedded in Video and Mobile
Via Internet News:
Ads delivered by Microsoft's newest acquisition, Massive Inc., will soon start appearing within games played with Xbox LiveR, MSN Games and other Microsoft online services. Integrating two areas receiving greater attention from the software giant, Microsoft's purchase of New York-based Massive links its new AdCenter with its successful Xbox LiveR subscription service.

Targeting Censored Keywords
Can it be done in Google? ICE (Internet Censorship Explorer) tested the possibilities, successfully placing an ad in Google.cn for Human Rights Watch on the search term “human rights china” that even when the HRW site itself was censored. Says Blogscoped: Bug or feature? I think it’s a feature!

Inside Google Book Search Blog
On Monday, Google launched a new blog for book search. What to expect, from the blog: our team sharing thoughts, tips and the occasional announcement about Book Search. We intend for this to be a place not only for Book Search enthusiasts, but also book lovers of every stripe. We'll be highlighting cool books we've found, discoveries you've made, big thoughts about the future of book search and more.

MS Buys DeepMatrix
Yahoo is unveiling its new AdCenter, and Microsoft is already on the chase, purchasing DeepMatrix:
The purchase is to enable Microsoft to "deliver new Web analytics applications in future releases of Microsoft adCenter." Last year Google acquired Urchin, and then renamed it to Google Analytics in November and began AdWords integration soon after. Microsoft will possibly do the same.

Google Founders Investing in Brazilian BioEthanol
Via New Google Blog: This May, according to 'Cidade Biz', Page and Brin will open a new office in São Paulo aiming to investing in Bioethanol processing plants. Last year, they made a similar investment in the North American company Nanosolar, wich develops and produces thin solar panels.

Continue reading "Reader Chris Says..." »

As part of my ongoing quest to stay abreast of major net issues, get ready for Web 2, and satisfy my editor's desire to have interesting conversations for Business 2, I'm talking to Vint Cerf and Jonathan Miller this week. What should I ask them?

Day Two, and I'm sort of hooked on learning this AdWords thing. Thanks to you all, I've changed my mix of keywords, separated my content bids from my search bids, been on the alert for Chinese based clickfraud (thanks, China Boi....no, really....) and a lot more. But here's a puzzle I ran into (the answer is below). I am testing the keyword "blog advertising" (stay away, fraudsters, I'm not spending that much...). This is a very hotly contested keyphrase, and Google wins the auction, as its ads are at the top. Here's a shot of the ads at the top:

There are also a ton of ads on the right, and you can see that by lifting my bid a bit, I'm at the top of the heap.

Cool! But that seems to tell me one thing - that not many folks are clicking on these ads - if they were, I couldn't have jumped over all the other contenders simply by adding a few pennies to my bid (as Google calculates position based on bid price AND click through rate...). Or, maybe I could - hummm.

Anyway, here's the real question. I noted that Google's ads had the word "blog" bolded. AHA!, I thought. Here's and example of the house dealing to itself! I couldn't find any way to bold MY ads using Google's platform. I've caught Google with its hand in the AdWords cookie jar!

Of course, a bit more research on the AdWords help page, and I found out this:

How do I make my ad text bold?

Your ad text will appear bold whenever it exactly matches a user's search terms. This includes your ad title, body, or Display URL.

Ahhhh....indeed. Shoulda figured it was something like that. Time to go change my creative to match the keywords....

And keep those tips coming, folks. I'm learning a lot!

I've played around with AdWords before, just to learn about how it works so I could write about it with some first hand knowledge. But I was never a "real" AdWords advertiser - I didn't have anything to sell. Sure, my publisher (and Amazon) have purchased the "John Battelle" keyword, which is great, but I had nothing to do with that.

That all changed today, when I created an account with Google and started a campaign, for real, promoting Federated Media's new ad platform. Now, sure, it may be odd to use one ad platform to promote another, but I believe that AdWords and FM are complementary, and further, well, I'm a big believer in intent driving content, as anyone who's read this site or my book knows. Plus, the more I know about Google, the smarter I might be as we take FM into the future.

The lessons so far are really, really interesting. I'll be sharing them as I go along, but a few to start:

- The AdWords experience so far is really slick. I know many of you who have used AdWords for a long time may have serious beefs, but for me, I was really blown away at how good the initial setup and UI experience is.

- I had a question and got an answer via a real person using IM within five minutes. That is really impressive, in particular given the griping I uncovered a year ago when my reporting consistently turned up how difficult Google was to contact.

- I thought perhaps of using IM again to ask this question, but instead, I'm wagering you all might know. My campaign has been running now for about 8 hours, and I'm starting to see clicks coming in. What strikes me as amazing is the number of impressions on "Google Content" sites (ie, AdSense) versus Google Search. It's not even an order of magnitude larger, it's several orders larger. When you think about it, this is not surprising (the market knows that search is riper pickings than content, after all.) But, Google breaks out reporting for search clicks (ie, for a particular search keyword, here are the number of clicks), but not for Google Content clicks. At least, that's how it seems to work. I wonder why? Anyone know?

- So far, I've been experimenting with about 30 keyphrases, and the most interesting stuff is to see how often that phrase is actually typed into Google. From what I can tell, I have not burned through my daily limit, so I'm getting a pretty accurate reflection of how often those terms are requested each day. Even if I'm only seeing a portion of the actual number of searches, it appears I'm getting an apples to apples comparison of which of my search terms get the most impressions, which is interesting learning.

- Lastly, I've read Google's AdWords TOS, and from what I can tell, I'm not in violation of them by posting this. If I am, I'm hoping some kind reader from Google or one of Google's partners will let me know how, and why.

I'm really looking forward to discovering more, and quite impressed - one day in - with the power of the service. It makes me wonder if the analysts covering GOOG from Wall Street are actually Google customers. Here I was, yapping about the company, but not actually interacting with this side of their equation. Fascinating.

I'm plum tuckered out (always wanted to say that) from finishing up the first draft of my paperback chapter (wooohoooo) but it's worth noting that Yahoo is rolling out a major update to its ad platform tonight. I got a run through from Tim Cadogan at Yahoo late last week, and the new interface is slick as can be, and very clearly targets what Yahoo believes are weaknesses in Google's AdWords platform. I'll have more later...but for now, here's MSNBC's story.

Quintura Search Approaches Launch
Quintura Search brings out version 1.5 boasting "complex query using a map of related words." It's generating some buzz as intuitively easy to understand - its display is interactive and lively, with fairly rewarding results.
Some initial questions after I checked-out the demo (I didn't fool around with the program because you need IE to install). What if the secondary search term you want isn't displayed? It's not clear if the order in which you choose the search terms effects the results. Quintura looks to be a great tool for exploration, for example of linguistic association or hierarchal learning, but it's potential to compete directly with single-entry search looks murky. Even if not a replacement to the titans, Quintura is adding a welcome dimension to the evolution of search.

Microsoft Answers with QnA Beta
Windows Live QnA Beta is expected soon, providing some competition in Q&A service to Yahoo! Answers (free, community/amateurs) and Google Answers (paid researchers, community comments). QnA is a collaborative effort--with individual ranking and community exchange. Based on precedent, Resource Shelf expects it to be free. From Live: "ask any question and get the 411 from people who have the answers you're looking for. Everybody's an expert on something--including you--so tap into that collective brain power and contribute your own." The curious can sign onto the beta list here.

More MSFT: A Froogle Foe, Live Products
TechCrunch makes some comparisons: an important difference between Froogle and Live Products, however. Froogle takes data from merchants via a push model (merchants use a Froogle API to include information), whereas Live Products pulls the data from the main Live Search web index - so Live Producst is presenting crawled results and algorithmic ranking. Merchants will be included if they are in the index without taking any additional steps.
Live Products is not as good as Froogle yet, although a big part of this may be due to the fact that Froogle, with their push model, obtain very structured data from merchants. Live Products, in contrast, structures the data directly.

I wonder....how much of the web is "fresh web", and how much is the same old stuff? By that I mean, at the most granular level of indexing - the word and the phrase - how much is relatively new, and how much has already gathered a lot of digital imprints?

I wonder because my old little league coach andy vollero has very few mentions in Google. Nothing to link to, in fact. He's clearly in the BG generation (Before Google). But I posted on him just now, and also in the last post. So he'll have two entries now. I wonder, each time Google, Yahoo, etc. crawl, how much of what they find is truly new - in the sense of entirely new words, phrases, names, etc? It'd make an interesting graph, I'd wager. Any of you search geeks out there have any ideas?

You never thought you'd hear it, eh? But this is a special one. Nine months after my first book tour appearance, (at the Bunch of Grapes on Martha's Vineyard, where I have family), I'm doing my last signing, at Vroman's bookstore in Pasadena (where I grew up).

Vroman's holds a very special place in my heart - it's my childhood bookstore. It's still my ideal model for "a place you can buy books." It's the largest independent bookstore in Southern California, and a wonderful place to just hang out. The store's Chairman, Andy Vollero, is a family friend (and was my little league coach, but now you know more than you wanted to...).

Tonight at 7 pm, I'll be talking about The Search, seeing old friends, and generally enjoying myself. I hope anyone down in the Pasadena area can join in!

Amazon Clicks Away from Google
As we covered earlier, Amazon and A9 (in addition to Alexa) are no longer serving Google results, deferring to Microsoft's Windows Live Search, after the expiration of the Amazon-Google contract on Sunday. Today, HitWise notes that the diversion from Amazon will be the bigger loss, highlighting that 10% of Amazon clicks veer to Google whereas only 1.8% for A9. SEW ruminated on the bandwagon of "Google dumpers" earlier. Citing a WashPost article --"Asked whether Microsoft's search engine is better than Google's, Tennenhouse said, "It will be up to users to try that out."--SEW quips, "So more a business move than a relevancy issue, fair to say :)"

Eying the Enemy's Enemy
John noted earlier today the WSJ framing the scene as Microsoft and Yahoo circle each other. More from the blogosphere on the dubious courtship:
SEW: Microsoft is behind with the core search technology. Yahoo's been struggling to upgrade its paid search service. Let's get these two kids together!
Kedrosky says: The two companies could hardly be less well suited to one another, with Microsoft having negative savvy in Yahoo's consumer media markets -- which is why if I were Brin/Page/Schmidt I'd do everything I could to convince supposed tie-up promoter Henry Vigil to get off his ass and make it happen. After all, there are few things better for your business than thoroughly distracting your two largest competitors.
And, notes from the peanut gallery: MSN may seek Yahoo's broad audience, but wait, what would Yahoo gain again? Canadian MSN users would say unhappy users. On Sunday, for a several hours, they were greeted by gibberish and non-functionality (screen shots here and here).

Spotback Launches
Spotback provides personalized search suggestions based on individual user ratings, rather than cached article views like Google and MSN. You don't have to register to start using Spotback, TechCrunch's favorite feature, but if you do you can start sharing ratings with other members. Geeking with Greg notes that the results are still off the mark, probably due to limited tracking dat, as well as continued algorithm tweaking.

Rumoritis: Google Health emerging next week?
Melissa Mayer suggested in a USA Today interview, "Health is an interesting one -- keep your eye out for that next week." Health has been rumored for sometime as an obvious Google vertical.
Via SEW, which earlier pointed to an interesting, older article from BMJ.com that has a cute anecdote on How Google is (Already) Changing Medicine (insertion mine).

Brazil Peering into Orkut's Social Circle
Adding to Google's pile of government entanglements, the Brazilian government is again pressing the search giant to share users' private information. Apparently rival soccer fans used Orkut's social networking features to organize a fight, and now Brazil---which is probably the only place Orkut matters -- wants legal rights to user data to prevent crimes. Brazil's Human rights prosecutor stated "authorities had received more than 14,000 complaints against Orkut for threats, racism and drug trafficking in March alone, the report further said."

Google Comic Book Search?

Lenssen visualizes..."Google already has a book search – wouldn’t it be nice if they expand this program to search comic books as well?"

Fraud Lawsuit Filed Against Yahoo
From the AP: A Yahoo Inc. advertiser has accused the Internet search engine of fraud, saying its ads have been appearing in spyware and "typosquatter" Web sites that take advantage of misspelled trademarks....The lawsuit said Yahoo failed to protect advertisers from a practice known as "click fraud," in which competitors click on an advertiser's ad hundreds of times to run up their rival's advertising costs. Update: Gary at Resource Shelf posted the full text of the lawsuit.

Persistent Search, the Next Turf War?
A couple weeks ago Burnham speculated that persistent search (always on queries, basically) is the future direction for advertising potential and SEO obsession. Along the way he names the infant PS technology and stacks that against some improvements he sees as necessary before the fight can break out. Russell Mettie disagrees, saying Yahoo! API can already do it all, and to prove it he whips up an API combining PS and Yahoo search over the weekend. "Simply combine our Search RSS feeds with our Feed Alert system and you can get an IM, Email or an SMS (in the US) when the search changes." Though, it seems Burnham is looking for "an end-to-end Persistent Search offering that enables consumer-friendly, comprehensive, real-time, automatic updates across multiple distribution channels at a viable cost. "

Back in the mid 1990s I was managing editor of Wired. Each month it was my job, working with Kevin Kelly and Louis Rossetto, to wrestle some huge idea to the ground (in the form of a long narrative, usually), give it a conceptual hook that made readers want to open the magazine, then imagine what that idea might look like on the cover of the magazine. In mid 1996 we alighted on what we thought was a very big idea - Microsoft, the champion of all software companies, was becoming a media company. If you did the math, it was clear as day. To bring the idea home we turned Gates into a media mogul, placing him on a raft in the middle of a pool, ostensibly somewhere in Beverly Hills, natch.

I convinced Denise Caruso, a dear friend and talented editor, to write the story (The story is here). We worked around the clock to bring this story home, and it was not without controversy - in fact, Bill Gates was so adamant that we had the story wrong, he came to our offices to disabuse us of the notion. (Louis, our editor in chief and CEO, was convinced the reason Gates hated our line of thinking was that media companies had terrible multiples on earnings, compared to software companies. If MSFT was seen as a media company, it's stock would tumble.)

My, how times have changed. Now Microsoft says it's being underestimated as a media company, and it plans to prove it. And that Wired story ten years ago rushed back to mind today as I read the stories about Microsoft's ad ambitions. From the Seattle PI:

Microsoft Corp., trying to reshape its business through advertising revenue, made its pitch Wednesday to some of the world's biggest advertisers. But the topic of Google was unavoidable -- even for Bill Gates.

"They've done a great job on their search, and what they've done with advertising," the Microsoft chairman acknowledged in response to a question from ad exec and TV host Donny Deutsch. But Microsoft, he said, "will keep them honest in the sense of being able to be better at a number of those things."

"I think this is a rare case where we're being underestimated," he added. That was the underlying message from Gates and other Microsoft executives on the opening day of the MSN Strategic Account Summit, attended by hundreds of representatives of major ad agencies and well-known advertisers such as Target, Nike, Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson.

What the hell is Battelle doing over at FM? Tonight you can find out, we're launching the beta of our new advertising platform for high quality blogs. More over here ....

Via Linden, this Seattle PI story reports on Microsoft's ambitions to build a massive grid - and spend an additional $2 billion doing it. This is the real test of a company's mettle - will it go big to create a platform for all computing, regardless of its near term potential monetization. Microsoft has seen the writing on the wall, apparently. And the company can outspend anyone at this particular game. Anyone.

Now, the company is NOT saying this publicly. In the piece its CFO would not comment on what the money was being spent on, other than to say they will be hiring a lot of sales folks. But it's clear that Microsoft must build a rival to Google's infrastructure if it is to compete. As Linden put it:

Few others have the resources to build this massive online computing infrastructure. Who else can build, maintain, and exploit a cluster of millions of servers? Who else can spend the billions required? Not Amazon. Not Ask. Not any venture-funded startup. Probably not Yahoo.

The search war is now an arms race.

Amen to that. I do quibble with one point - I think Yahoo will spend its way into this game.

I wonder if it makes sense to just buy Sun for the server building capacity! (Just a joke, Jonathan...)

Here's the graf you need to pay attention to in today's big story (Journal article here, paid sub):

Currently, talks of an equity stake in Yahoo don't appear to be active, given that Microsoft is focusing on a reorganization that it hopes will re-energize its effort to compete with Google, the fast-growing provider of search services and advertising.

What the F? This seems to be a non story. Everyone talks to everyone about everything, all the time. End of story.

SEW points to YAS (yet another study) which shows that MSN wins in an unscientific relevance test. One would not want to generalize to the billions of results (and infinite queries) that search provides, but if you're looking for insurance quotes in Ohio, brother, you're golden. From the study's intro:

We didn't start out attempting to figure out which search engines were most relevant, we started out looking for holes in the results. Then we would structure our marketing and search engine optimization projects to fill the holes. This makes it much easier to grab new customers than simply going after the most popular keyword.

To target the holes, we needed to know three things. Which terms to target, where the holes were, and what kind of site was currently filling the hole. Then we could construct a marketing and SEO program that would cost less, and be more effective.

This example was taken from ananalysis for an insurance company in Cincinnati Ohio.

We do our initial research and come up with the twenty search terms for insurance and the types of insurance this company sells. They are most concerned with increasing the auto insurance business.

Our research shows that the most popular term is Cincinnati insurance. We do our research and find that most of the results in the first two pages are well optimized pages, and it's going to take quite a bit of work to crack.

Track Tim in Google Earth
Tim works for and is wearing the product of a GPS tracker company, and he’s become a lab rat for tracking folks using Google Earth (no privacy implications here, of course). There's also a New Yorker named Dave both wearing a live tracker and displaying images from a cam on the side of his glasses.

http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2006/05/wheres_tim_trac.html
http://www.timhibbard.com/wherestim/default.aspx
http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2006/04/real-person-real-time-google-maps.html
http://www.shakindave.com/index.php?flash=yes

Google Parses Top URl Search Result
Google tests more UI results, this time trying divvying the top result into its hierarchy, letting users choose relevant content within. The test occured at least in Dutch and French, categorizing into articles, links, forum, games, teaching lessons, etc... As SEL notes, "If this is something that becomes widespread your page naming conventions had better make sense and be accurate ;)"
http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-05-01.html#n47
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/04/new-google-test-more-from-top-result.html
PIC: http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7506/607/1600/google_serp_test.jpg
PIC: http://img502.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ss7gg.jpg
via http://www.searchenginelowdown.com/2006/05/google-serps-experiment-top-ranking.html

"The Most": Search-Directed TV
Finally, TV becomes less dumb by letting search trends to determine news/entertainment content (yeah, Current does this, sort of…). Though the execution of the idea is has yet to be seen-- this is a neat idea, something of a triumph of search potential and technology into the MSM.
(Perhaps a future trend, and places them in better competition with UTube/Digg and the like.)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12537219/

Yahoo! and MSFT, the Counter-Attack, Enough?
Business Week article on the tech overhaul of Yahoo! and MSN adCenter. Concludes that their changes may hurt rather than help, suggesting that advertisers want Google's large audience more than a super-targeted small group. MSN's targeted ads hope to used demographics on users, but Google prefers to continue improving the prediction ability of the few cached words it stores from individual search histories.
(Interesting juxtapose to your recent post) Also, MSFT to invest an additional $2 million in web services to compete.)
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_19/b3983079.htm
http://www.paidcontent.org/msft-expected-to-invest-another-2-billion-on-web-services-xbox

Grayboxx Local Search
How exactly is Grayboxx going to improve local search? Well, their algorithm is in the stealth stage, as their beta webpage says, so they aren't revealing details yet. But it looks like a guerilla tactic approach to ranking local results, taking cues from tags in digital images and Outlook address books to create a local community rolodex of favorable votes "without imposing review-writing chores."
http://www.grayboxx.com/

Rhode Island May Be First Wi-Fi State
http://searchviews.com/archives/2006/05/awwwamericas_sm.php

Swicki
An interesting mashup between search and community tagging, the new Swicki attempts to create a "cloud of buzz" by essentially providing communities ;with search histories (or so I gather from the demo).
(These could be useful for well-delineated, like-minded groups who share trust in knowing what each other is interested in. But many online communities are dynamic experiments, a game of musical chairs with very different-minded people potentially approaching the same subject (or search) in different ways. In other words, it could just be frustrating to a minority member of a given community--though for the rest a boon.)
http://eurekster.com/

Google Interactive, Integrating User/Expert Feedback
Matt Cutts calls it Google++, paying closer attention to user and expert feedback on product design. Recently used for the customization of Base and Talk, notes Blogscoped.
(This initiative is likely to become key to the future survival of Google--as it bloats-- finding ways to insure that user experience remains a central driver in directing the company's innovation instead of splaying in all directions.)
http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-04-29.html#n83

Internet Archive sells extended archiving for organizations
Archive-It 1.5 provides subscription-based service that allows institutions to store, categorize history (at lower price) from their website and WWW. "Users are able to explore and access these text-searchable collections, without needing additional technical expertise."

http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/ArticleReader.aspx?ArticleID=15639

http://www.archive.org/

MySpace Videos Most Popular in Days
http://www.paidcontent.org/myspace-video-numbers-1-in-matter-of-days

And Yet More….

Utah Techie takes on Orrin "watchman state" Hatch with Open, Wired Campaign
http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,70761-0.html?tw=rss.technology

WashPost Stops to Talk About ParkedPages
http://searchviews.com/archives/2006/05/google_wins_the.php

The Tech Market in Mega Churches
Wired article juxtaposes well with 2004 article, transition from "Churches wage war on Cell phones"
http://news.com.com/Is+Jesus+the+next+killer+app/2100-1025_3-6066157.html?tag=nefd.lede
From 2004: http://www.ciol.com/content/news/2004/104092203.asp

Google Lags in South Korea
http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2006/04/28/181274-google-fails-to-make-inroads-in-s-korea

Continue reading "Kamal Writes..." »

One of the things that struck me the most about talking to all the folks at Google was this principle: the closer you got to the core, the more you heard the word "Microsoft." Eric Schmidt spent most of his career fighting (and losing to) Microsoft. Ram Shriram worked at Netscape, as did Omid Kordestani. John Doerr - enough said. The folks who are closest to Larry and Sergey are very, very worried about Microsoft, as well they should be.

Today's NYT has a piece which provides some details on what Google is doing about that concern. From it:

With a $10 billion advertising market at stake, Google, the fast-rising Internet star, is raising objections to the way that it says Microsoft, the incumbent powerhouse of computing, is wielding control over Internet searching in its new Web browser.

Google, which only recently began beefing up its lobbying efforts in Washington, says it expressed concerns about competition in the Web search business in recent talks with the Justice Department and the European Commission, both of which have brought previous antitrust actions against Microsoft.

The new browser includes a search box in the upper-right corner that is typically set up to send users to Microsoft's MSN search service. Google contends that this puts Microsoft in a position to unfairly grab Web traffic and advertising dollars from its competitors.

Web 2 aside, most folks use IE, and it's still a critical distribution channel for Google. With Microsoft increasingly seen as the underdog in all things Internet, it's not surprising to hear that Google is actively reminding the world of Microsoft's virtual monopoly on browsing, nor is it a surprise to see how active Google is in promoting Firefox.

Again from Lohr's piece:

The focus of Google's concern is a slender box in the corner of the browser window that allows users to start a search directly instead of first going to the Web site of a search engine like Google, Yahoo or MSN. Typing a query and hitting "Enter" immediately brings up a page of results from a designated search engine.

That slice of on-screen real estate has the potential to be enormously valuable, and Microsoft is the landlord. Internet Explorer 7 is the first Microsoft browser to have a built-in search box, while other browsers like Firefox, Opera and Safari have had them for some time. Google estimates that the boxes, when available, are the starting point for 30 to 50 percent of a user's searches, making them a crucial gateway to the lucrative and fast-growing market for advertisements that appear next to search results.

Read to the end to get the kicker: PC makers can change the default engine in IE7 - selling it to the highest bidder. Now do you wonder why Google is in bed with Dell?