John Battelle's Searchblog

BB points to a NYT story about how cell phones are turning into search driven life navigation devices. I wrote about this a while back, as a scenario....

And OhGizmo has more coverage.

And, BB points out that Google is a total prude.

Continue reading "Reader Brian Writes..." »

Sunday night, loyal diggers were online submitting sentimental screenshots of the 2.0 face. And when Digg was unavailable during the transition, one digger created a commemorative mirror of the down page (complete with rolling midi). On Monday, at 6 am (PST) Digg 3.0 went live with three new non-tech news categories, the addition of video (the first non-news container), and tighter tracking tabs on friends' digging activity.

The expansion into World & Business, Entertainment, Science and Video, is Digg's effort to attract a wider member base, though Technology will remain the default feed. Within hours, aside from a host of reviews, Digg users built hacks on version 3---one, for instance, returning the category bar back to the right-side of the screen. Here are a couple great synopses and reviews of the changes to peruse. Or you can listen to Kevin Rose present 3.0 himself---including more udpates to come.

The real revolution will come with a second push in July, when Digg introduces two new infosthetic features that visually display in detail what stories are getting relatively hot/cold, how many users say so, who says so, and if those diggers share common interests. Digg Incoming will allow users to scale vetting the +2000 incoming stories that come in daily (or rather make it possible for any one digger). New diggs will drop down like stacking blocks in realtime for each story, making quickly and easily comprehensible the relative popularity of hundreds of stories, lined up alongside each other, at a time. The other upcoming data visualization Rose calls "Digg spy on crack"---referring to the current Digg Spy, a running screen of realtime user activity (showing diggs, undiggs, comments, etc.). The new spy will display the dynamic bunching of user activity around popular stories like the movement of bees aggregating around burgeoning/wilting flowers.

In other Digg news:
- CNet just added a Digg button to all their pages, likely the first major, traditional media outlet to do so.
- Digg's taffic is rapidly approaching comparison to that of the New York Times.
- Rose made number 23 in Business 2.0 top '50 Who Matter Now' (alongside Wikipedia).

(via Melanie)

I am traveling. The day before the day the Fourth of July holiday starts. And Delta and the JFK security staff is severly understaffed. My. god. Why do we do this to ourselves? I look forward to the long weekend. Will post more then...

Yesterday, a Senate committee voted out the net neutrality amendment by a narrow tie missing the needed majority (11-11), while approving the larger bill. The protective amendment could reenter before the broad telecom bill arises for a floor vote, though it's not clear when that will happen. Despite the loss, the close vote is leading many neutrality activists to hope that the Republican opposition will face a challenge in the full Senate vote.
(via Melanie)

ZDNet: It's "predatory"....

Though it's very easy to cast it that way, and certainly is a strong argument, think about it this way - If Google bought MySpace, it'd all of a sudden be waist deep in the content creation/publishing business, a business it's been very wary of playing in. Now, I think Google is a media company, of course, but when they start owning sites that otherwise might be major AdSense partners, it's the equivalent of pooping where they eat. Sure, you own MySpace, and it's huge inventory, but you've just made the rest of your AdSense partners very, very nervous - all of a sudden you are not the neutral partner, you're the big ol' competitor in the content space. You're the head, and the tail feels like it's being wagged.

I think Google realized that buying MySpace could queer its AdSense business, and that's why they didn't do it. I was led to this line of thinking by a good pal in the industry with whom I was meeting yesterday, who for now must remain anonymous, but trust me, he's deep in this game.

Check this out
Google unveils its secure-cart Checkout program, integrated directly into search results. A little green shopping cart displays beside participating merchants; when selected, logged-in Google ID users will find the purchase process reduced to one page and returning users will find the data pre-populated (bells ring across the privacy vigilant web). Actually, in general it will be one page-- a speedier checkout being Google's major selling point--but it can be more.

AdWords advertisers will accumulate transaction fee discounts, even free usage, for increased sales. As an incentive to non-AdWords sellers, Google rates will be 2% + $.20 (in comparison to PayPal's 1.9% + $.30) commission. Asked whether Google is considering including in search results direct-checkout options for other secure online transaction companies, representatives said only that the company would consider anything that would improve user experience.

“We can do that.”
Rupert Murdoch claims Google passed up the chance to buy MySpace at half the price he paid, just before it metastasised into 8% of Google's search traffic. In the Verbatim of Wired's July cover story, Murdoch summaries his impression of Google's pass: "They thought, “It’s nothing special. We can do that.” Err... (via GigaOm)

Answering to Google
You can ask about Google, but in the end Google Answers answers to Google. In a string of playful submissions to Google Answers about the company itself, the tricksters are rooted out with a revealing final reply. Because Google Answers are written by non-employee researchers, the note says, they are not qualified to answer questions about the company. As SEW writes "Got that? Freelance researchers are apparently qualified to answer questions about any other company in the world, but when it comes to Google, special treatment is required. Incredible."

Google, v.
The Oxford English Dictionary--last bastion of standardized English--includes "Google" as verb in the latest draft for its next edition. The pending definition, noted by Resource Shelf:
intr. To use the Google search engine to find information on the Internet.
trans. To search for information about (a person or thing) using the Google search engine.

Farecast opened today. So the 400 some odd of you with private betas, I hope you got what you were looking for!

Google sells Baidu stock
Google disinvests from the Chinese search engine Baidu, of which it owned 2.6 percent stock (about $63m). Though Google bought the Baidu stock before it launched its own engine in China, according to Bloomberg, Baidu stock is still out-performing Google and the other dominant US engines in China. Baidu market share reached 27 percent this year. (Reuters piece)

GBuy expected tomorrow
GBuy--Google's premiere online payment system --- is expected for testing on June 28, or sometime this week. Searchblog's earlier post on GBuy. WSJ article (sub needed) sums it up: "Consumers who search for items like "shoes" or "strollers" on Google's search site will see text ads with a symbol or icon designating advertisers that accept GBuy payments. Shoppers normally would have clicked on an ad and been linked to that merchant's Web site. Now, while they will still be linked to the merchant's site, they will go through a different checkout process integrated with Google if they choose GBuy for their transaction. Details of the service could still change before Google's official GBuy announcement."

X1 desktop search now free
A pioneer desktop search, X1 Enterprise is now free to download, edging Google Desktop. X1 can index over 370 file formats. (X1 earlier on Searchblog, here.)

IM search
Windows Live Messenger plans to add an IM search client. It sounds not unlike the the Korozu Byoms mentioned earlier on Searchblog. (via Resource Shelf)

Web Brain
WebBrain is a visual, interactive search engine containing the DMOZ directory. "WebBrain incorporates over 2.5 million URLs, which are organized into more than 353,000 categories by 35,000 volunteer editors of the Netscape Open Directory Project." (via Infosthetics) (PC only)

Proctor & Gamble, leads in ads
According to the latest Leading National Advertiser Report, Proctor & Gamble became the largest advertiser in 2005, passing GM. Resource Shelf points out the full PDF shows company line-items for online ad spending.

Y! Groups search expands
Yahoo Groups added date/period, author, subject, and text advanced search options, says Resource Shelf.

Ingenio's 'pay-per-call' service
A new service for experts (from financial advisers to professors) that essentially schedules phone consultations on private numbers with clients based on preliminary vetting for time and prices (based on the expert's initial preferences). (CNet article)

I read the print editions of both the NYT and WSJ today. Why? Well, I am traveling, on a plane, and for a period of about 45 minutes I could not have my computer on. That was just enough time to pore through the papers, and I will admit, it was a mostly pleasant experience. Not that I plan to subscribe to them or anything, and I did have to hit the head to wash my hands before cracking open my laptop to write this missive.

A few interesting things in today's papers, beyond the exhaustive coverage of Buffet's gift to the Gates foundation (truly astonishing.) First, in the Journal. Two full page color advertisements (wish I could link to them) caught my eye. The first, on page B5 of the Journal's Marketplace section, was from Google. It was easy to tell it was a Google ad - it was mostly whitespace, with a number of colored spheres arranged randomly about the page. Each sphere, it turns out, was labeled with the name of a city where Google has a sales office. The ad implored qualified sales folks to contact Google. In other words, Google is hiring like crazy in sales, and apparently AdWords aren't enough to find candidates. (What, great sales people don't just type "sales jobs" into Google?!).

The next ad, at B9, was also Google related. In fact, it had a headline which blared "She Found Your Furniture Ad On Google." The ad featured a picture of a young girl playing with a doll house. It was an ad for MSN AdCenter, touting its demographic-driven approach, and how much more relevant MSN was over Google's AdSense (57% higher conversion rate, the ad claimed).

Apparently, while AdCenter is 57% better than AdSense, and AdSense is not good enough to entice the right sales folks to Google, neither product can live without a full page, color ad in the Wall Street Journal's Marketplace section. As I recall, those ads go for $64,000 to $120,000 a pop, depending on editions and discounts. Something to think about. I'm not claiming this proves that print is alive and well (it's certainly not dead, but parts of it are, well, pretty attenuated), but it does prove that enduring brands (the WSJ) and important and savvy audiences (those who read the Marketplace section of the Journal) have gotten a pretty clear endorsement from two of the very same giants who are supposedly threatening print's very business model.

(An aside... if you're a sales person who is thinking about jumping to a new job with an exciting new ad model, you could do far worse, of course, than working at Google (or MSN, for that matter). But, FM, my startup, is also hiring, here in SF, in New York, and even LA, should that be where you work. If you want to learn more, ping me or Chas. No point in promoting Google and MSFT's ads without tossing in one of my own....)

A lot of dreaming lately by folks whose baggage is clearly lost somewhere over 1994. Latest is Leo Hindrey, a major cable player in the mid 90s, who claims that the Yahoo and Google's of the world are temporary phenomena - and that soon all that will matter is distributors (the cable and telco guys, natch), and content (their pals at Disney, of course). Yahoo and Google, et al, will fold because they don't own rights to content packages like movies, and they don't control distribution, like cable companies and telcos.

This guy is deeply, hilariously wrong. TechDirt points out the first reason - he's missing that folks don't go online for content alone, in fact, they go online to communicate, converse, and to declare who they are in the world. Sure, they also expect content to be there, but increasingly, it ain't Time Warner's or Disney's, it's YouTube or blogs. And if the Disney's of the world want to succeed on the Web, they best learn from the habits of the web natives, and not shove mid 1990s media models down their throats.

But Hindrey is also missing that the business model of controlling proprietary content due to massive capital outlays and control of distribution channels is, well, no longer the only game in town. There's a new distribution sheriff in town, and his name is search. His deputy is the open Internet. Get used to it. It's not going to go away.

Jellyfish.com launched its beta today. The model is to get advertisers to bid directly for the attention of the customer by paying them...eliminating the middleman.

Infoweek coverage.

Some buzz around the web regarding Ask's filtering of terms like "pedophilia", which returns no results, instead informing you "This query does not comply with Ask.com Terms of Service."

Such a response certainly gives me pause (why can't I research any topic I want, even if it's unsavory?), so I asked CEO Jim Lanzone about it, and he assured me it was an overzealous adult content filtering problem, and it will be resolved this week. It does raise the issue, however, of what is being filtered, and how, and how much we know about it. That merits more discussion.

There's probably a very good reason for this, but I don't know what it is. As a Searchblog reader KK discovered, the query "amazon.com" returns no results in the current Google service. It returns tons of results in Ask, Yahoo, and AOL, which uses Google to power search. Odd.

Is this an anticompetiive thing? I can't imagine. But a Google search for Yahoo.com does bring up one result - "yahoo.com." Amazon.com does not.

Update: A Google spokesperson responds: "This is a technical problem that we're currently working to resolve. We've talked to Amazon and they're aware that we're working quickly to correct the issue." I then asked: "How is this a technical issue? I mean, what kind of technical issue? Can you give some more details as to how a technical issue created this, just for Amazon? Or is it wider?" If I get an answer, I'll post it here.

E-Media Tidbits points to a Neilsen/Norman eye tracking study that reveals:

...people do not look at static ads with graphic treatment.

Users seem to "zone out" (with their peripheral vision) ads and other site elements that have clearly distinguishable ad features such as graphics and colors that make the ads look different from the rest of the site, or animated ads....When users DO look at ads with graphics, those ads usually have:
-Heavy use of large, clear text
-A color scheme that matches the site's style
-Attention-grabbing proprieties such as black text on a white background, words such as "free" and interactive (UI)

It's interesting that the ads which are "native" to a site - in other words, that are driven by text, as much of web still is, and that follow a site's design approach, do best. It reminds me of ads in Wired in the middle years - advertisers started to adapt Wired's unique visual grammar, and the whole publication felt like one ongoing conversation. I've argued for the past few years that advertising needs to not interrupt, but rather be part of a site's dialog. This research seems to confirm that concept.

Stall on net neutrality vote
The Sentate delays its vote on the telecom bill affecting net neutrality, until at least Tuesday.
Tim "inventor of the internet" Berners-Lee posted a video on his blog saying, "When I invented the Web, I didn't have to ask anyone's permission... Freedom of connection, with any application, to any party, is the fundamental social basis of the Internet, and, now, the society based on it."

Yahoo Mobile
Yahoo launches mobile web access to mail, IM, and contacts.

French satellite maps
The French government unveils Geoportail.fr, a site with detailed satellite imagery of the country that it says has better resolution than Google Maps. (via Reuters) Same as Resource Shelf's complaint however, the page didn't load on my try.

Internet Archive, Alexandria v.2
CNet takes a close-up look at Brewster Kahle and the ambitious work at the Internet Archive "to build, make freely accessible and preserve what he calls--in reference to the legendary lost library of the ancient world--the "Library of Alexandria, v.2."
Resource Shelf expands on the article, noting the only thing missing is a mention of the Archive-It program, which allows institutions to create their own web archives.

A long talk with Snap
Search Engine Lowdown posts an in depth interview with Snap CEO, Tom McGovern and COO, Fre Walti.

Google is currently offering premium videos free as a pilot for content sponsorship. Only a small number of advertisers and media publishers are participating in this limited trial. The ads run at the end of the videos and Google says user-generated content will remain ad-free.

How it works (from Google):
1. Advertisers select and bid to sponsor individual videos.
2. The winning bidders for each video are promoted in three ways:
- The ability to run a 15-30 second post-roll video ad
- Persistent branding while the video is playing through a text and icon above the video player
- A listing on the sponsored videos page
3. If a user navigates to one of the sponsored videos, we only show the in-stream video ad once the video has finished playing. If the user clicks the text, logo or visible URL above the video window, they will be taken to the advertiser's site.
4. At the conclusion of the campaign, the advertiser will receive stats on the performance of his/her campaign.

The newly launched search site, Mpire, combines product comparisons across multiple sites with product analytics to aid consumer decisions.

Shoppers gain a more accurate picture of market prices with consumer analytics such as bid/price histories on products, and recommendations on optimal days and times to bid. In partnership with eBay, Craigslist, Yahoo, and Overstock, Mpire serves as a convenient access point for users to "search by price, seller, type of payment, location [or] how many bids there are on any given item."

Former Expedia president Matt Hulett joins as CEO: “Think of it as the start of ‘Shopping 2.0’ ― search and analytics to help buyers make smarter and more informed decisions.” Mpire's step toward transparency parallels Farecast, which Battelle wrote about earlier.

Adobe Flash to include Google Search
Adobe enters a distribution deal to bundle Google Toolbar software with its downloads for several years, starting now with Shockwave. This is a shift to larger upfront marketing costs for Google, Reuters notes, in a race before the Vista release. (As a glimpse of market share, Shockwave currently runs on 55 percent of web connected desktops, according to Adobe.)

Real-time ad auctions
Right Media offers automated real-time online auctioning for ad spaces, bypassing traditional ad agencies and increasing market transparency. According to RM, its platform now includes 11,000 ad networks, advertisers and publishers, trading about two billion impressions daily. (CNet)

New Google ad system
Google announces Content Referral Network for select publishers--an ad system that aims to overcome the CPC fraud-vulnerability in AdSense. CRN will reward by completion of commercial actions (CPA), such as filling out a survey or making a purchase. (via Monetize)

Google as media Co. -- Vint Cerf
A Searchblog reader in the Netherlands points out a Dutch documentary about Google, "in which Vint Cerf clearly does see Google as a media company, as he compares Google with a newspaper or television station" in an explanation about bias in the media. Viewable online here, this excerpt is in the frame beginning at 46:58/51:04. (Thanks Martijn.)

Brain powered search?
Scalability, submission quality, and natural language issues be damned, Jatalla defies trends in algorithmic-powered search engines and turns to human computing. Scheduled to launch in July, this index is fed by user-submitted "lexivotes"-- three link recommendations per term. The engine returns results based only for exact-term matches, and users are limited to one lexivote per term.

According to the SeekingAlpha site, Google is testing a CPA (cost per action) network - the kind of approach Bill Gross is trying at Snap, and many others, like Valueclick, have employed, with limited success so far. Why? Is Google hedging against click fraud and spam? Is this just spaghetti against the wall? I am asking now....so far, this is still officially unconfirmed.

The detail they have over at SeekingAlpha - from a note to one of the members inviting him into the test - is interesting in itself. Google is clearly changing the rules with CPA. For instance:

How can I promote the CPA ad unit?
Since this is a test and these CPA ads are not regular ad units, we are giving you more flexibility in saying things like “I recommend this product” or “Try JetBlue today” next to the CPA ad unit. However, you should still not incite someone to click on the ad, so saying “Click Here” is not ok.

What can I do to optimize my revenue from the CPA ads?
While we encourage you to experiment as much as possible with these ads on your site, here are some general tips on implementing a CPA ad:
1) Ads that blend in with the site and are placed prominently tend to perform better. Look to integrate the ad within the page.

Hmmmm....

The poster, David Jackson, immediately shorted Valueclick. However, the stock is up this morning, so far.

Update from Google spokesman, who confirmed CPA tests: We're always looking for new ways to provide effective and useful features to advertisers, publishers, and users. As part of these efforts we are currently testing a cost per action pricing model to give advertisers more flexibility and provide publishers another way to earn revenue through AdSense. We’re pleased with how the test is progressing and will continue to gather feedback from advertisers and publishers.

A Moldovian blackhat successfully indexed and gained rank (since dropped due to the maelstrom of publicity) for over 5 billion junk pages (example) in just three weeks---duping Google, along with Yahoo and MSN. The junk pages are also covered in AdSense ads, leading Email Battles to speculate that they significantly contributed to recent measures/allegations of click-fraud.

Battelle adds that "5 billion pages is the entire size of the Google index just a year or so ago. The last claim, before they stopped MAKING claims, was 8 billion...think about that."

While junk results are frequently a problem in Yahoo and MSN, the news here is that Google indexed more of the low quality sites faster. While the attention is warranted, to be fair, a concluding judgement should note that this is also a function of Google generally indexing more pages, faster, as Ana's Lair writes. See the original, weekend post from Monetize, which kindly provides a how-to guide for future blackhat reference.
(via Melanie)

Google verticals languishing
Search dominates Google traffic by 79.98%, while its dedicated service sites combined gain paltry numbers. ZNet story here, considers the end game.

Naymz
The Search quotes a Harris poll that says nearly 40 percent of internet users have performed the requisite vanity search.
“I’d be willing to wager that this number will head north of 90 percent in the coming years, as search becomes as individually definitional as finding oneself in the white pages was during the rise of the telephone. Besides ourselves, nearly 20 percent of us have looked for former flames and 36 percent for old friends, and 29 percent have researched a family member.”
Now Tom Drugan, co-founder Naymz, says his company has used the quote and poll as a successful springboard to launch their start up. Naymz is creating a searchable index of profile (vanity) pages, aimed at professionals who want to pull together an online portfolio of their citations for networking.

Full text in Yahoo trademark case
The dating site LoveCity filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against Yahoo and three other companies for allegedly using 'lovecity' as a keyword in their AdWords campaigns. Resource Shelf has the full text of the court filing.

Netscape Digg clone?
Late last week AOL-Netscape launched a beta socially-ranked news site (sort of) that many loyal diggers jumped on as a Digg clone. In a response, Digg CEO Jay Adelson questioned the scalability and editorial control of the so-called "Digg Killer," and welcomed the competition. But a CNet suggests that despite the beta's voting capabilities, the Netscape site retains sufficient editorial control to mean the two are different beasts.

Recruit Job search
Freshly launched, Recruit says they offer the first trilingual, international job search engine---in Chinese, Japanese and English.

Snap Interview
Garrett French has a great interview with Snap's Tad Benson over a SEL, also pointing out Snap's great blog.

NewMedia launches
NameMedia, launching this week, is creating a series of vertical portal search platforms on topic-specific domains (with a technology they call SiteSense). The targeted domains serve users of 'direct search' (perhaps better known as 'direct navigation')--those bypassing search engines and instead directly typing a product name into the address bar as a url (for instance ww.photography.com).

I spent the past weekend working hard - but not on this computer. I managed to fix about two thirds of the badly damaged irrigation system in my yard, and hope to get to the rest of it today. This week I am taking vacation time to work on the other part of my life, the part that hasn't seen much attention in the past year or so. I'm also taking my kids to Disneyland! Posting will be light, but I'll be around...

Philipp wondered. His research shows a very large list of English queries. Some seem innocuous, and I wonder why they are on the list...

(note: updated for clarity)

Slowly but surely Google is checking off all the various things that irk traditional advertisers about Adwords. Today, they are launching "ad scheduling for Google AdWords." This is also known as dayparting.

My view - dayparting is not that big a deal - I'm currently researching buying another car. At 10.45 pm. So send me ads! Who cares what time I'm Googling "Toyota Minivan"?

By now many of you have probably seen the Diet Coke and Mentos video, which is amazing. Hitwise has a great post showing how searches for those terms exploded as the video viraled its way around the web.

An interesting question raised is whether Diet Coke and Mentos, as well as perhaps their competitors, should leverage this notoriety by purchasing related search keywords. I say, absolutely!

According to this report, which is light on confirming details, the RIAA is considering action against the YouTubes of the world, because there are so many videos of kids hamming it up to songs where rights have not been cleared. Like this one, for example, on Google Video.

Good f'ing lord, RIAA. Wake up. This is how we use music in the real world. Get over yourselves.

If it's not, it's still pretty interesting. Philipp gives a detailed overview of a forum posting from a fellow who claims to be an engineer deep in the bowels of Google. Great stuff in here. Including:

“The Google application process is annoyingly slow and can easily take months sometimes. Anyone who’s really interested in working there would be much better off finding an employee to refer them”

“Nobody keeps track of 20% time with any care whatsoever. It’s assumed that, if a deadline is pressing on your main project, you’ll work on that."

"...you can divide internet traffic into five approximate and unequal segments: porn, spam, corporate, knowledge, and personal."

SEW tells us that Japan is pulling a Quaero.

Major imagery update on Google Earth
For its first birthday, Google Earth gets updates, most impresively "sub-meter high-resolution imagery available for more than one third of the world's population. While initially available only in Google Earth, this database will also be accessible in Google Maps shortly." And a peek at the future: Earth with interactive touch sensors and voice recognition.

Aiming for quantity and quality at Google Video
A zeitgeist-y ranking of Google videos rising in popularity is now available, organized per 40 countries. The algorithm ranks video popularity based on both the viewer reach and rate of views. Oh, BTW...Google wants to host all the world's videos and currently places no file size restrictions on hosted videos, according to GV business manager Hunter Walk, talking in an interview with Beet.TV.

Mikons symbol tags
Mikons launches, bringing symbolism to social tagging and search networks. The Mikon Machine provides a free online vector editing graphic tool that allows users to design their own tradable symbols. The visual personal tags can be exported to other online social applications.

Support from a passive search community
Baynote features search backed by community confidence without requiring explicit tagging actions by users, instead tracking user interest by cues such as bookmarking, clipping, or printing.

Spreadsheets fall short
While some users have found Google Spreadsheets useful, most online reviews conclude the first free online spreadsheets aren't quite ready for prime-time--with lingering concerns over privacy and limited capabilities (though the beta's bare bones are expected to soon be fortified).

MySpace Launches Job Search
The newly unveiled MySpace Careers powers with Simply Hired.

Picasa Web Albums
Google's Picasa introduces a test version of Web Albums, with 250 MB free storage space and photo sharing capabilities.

The big purple brain
A Yahoo promo perches 25 Answers experts in a "gigantic purple brain (complete with firing synapses)," responding to questions sent up from passersby on street-level for 72 straight hours.

Pax Google
Its search market share continues to grow. "Compared with March 2006, the May figures from Hitwise show Google gaining 1 percentage point of share, Yahoo staying almost flat and Microsoft losing 1 percentage point." (IDG News Service). And, an update on progress in Google's wifi aims and efforts in San Francisco and Mountain View.

Gay pride portal launches at Yahoo
For Gay Pride Month Yahoo launched a gay pride portal, "powered by virtually Yahoo's entire arsenal of social media tools" according to MicroPersuasion.

Or simple datacenter? Let's not go too over the top, folks.

From the TImes:

On the banks of the windswept Columbia River, Google is working on a secret weapon in its quest to dominate the next generation of Internet computing. But it is hard to keep a secret when it is a computing center as big as two football fields, with twin cooling plants protruding four stories into the sky.

The complex, sprawling like an information-age factory, heralds a substantial expansion of a worldwide computing network handling billions of search queries a day and a growing repertory of other Internet services.

It's a data center. It's there because it was a cheap place to put it. It ain't a secret weapon. But John Markoff, one of the authors of the piece, has always broken new numbers on the amount of computing power in Google's arsenal, this piece now puts it at nearly half a million CPUs.

Big.com. Search....bigger. From Snap and Bill Gross.

I've been noodling over an idea, and wanted to get all your input on it. Here at Searchblog I've been blessed with a very robust community, one that over the years has gotten my email and used it very judiciously - usually to send me tips and ideas for Searchblog items. I very much appreciate the tips, but as many of you have noted, I can't get to grokking each of them and posting them in as timely a fashion as I might like.

I've also been fascinated by the rise of community edited sites like Slashdot, Digg (an FM site), Reddit (also an FM site), and others, and find the model - of a community moderated approach to news - to be very cool, and as you all know, very very powerful.

Now, I had the thought - what if I were to create a Digg-like site for the Search vertical? There's an open source module, Pligg, that looks pretty easy to implement, and we've already got the coolest and hardest part done - a strong community of readers who care enough to engage in a particular subject matter.

You can see this idea in action over at psfk.com, another FM site. Piers and his team have created martkd.com, a sort of Digg or Slashdot for marketing stories. What do you all think of doing the same for Searchblog?

Update: To clarify, I'm not thinking about losing my own and Melanie's analytical posts, but instead *adding* this feature....

One of my consistent comments about the online advertising world is that all the forecasts are too low, and will always be reforecasted upwards, as folks start to realize that more and more advertising can be classified as "online." SEW notes this trend here:

TNS Media Intelligence (which tracks online display advertising spend) has increased their forecast for 2006. This is a 4% correction from their earlier estimated growth, (and bucks the hold pattern or downward trend for other forms of advertising). The company cited earlier estimates as far too conservative after tracking faster than expected migration to the online space from traditional media. Online ad spend growth was 19.4% last first quarter, and is projected to continue to grow by 13% and reach a whopping 12% of total advertising spend in 2006. This figure is far higher than ever reported before.

Huh. Seems standard business practice - playing vendors off each other - is now a news event, according to Fox, a Newscorp. property.

"We will redesign the pages to make search more prominent," Peter Chernin, chief operating officer of News Corp. said of its MySpace.com business. "We will auction off our search business to Google, Yahoo, or MSN."

Should be an interesting auction, just like the fight for AOL. What will the split be? 85%? Way too low. I'm wagering that for the first contracted period, anyway, it'll hit over 90%.

(via Melanie)
We're a bit late on this, but it's a pretty big subject, and this by no means is the end of the story. The House rejected the net neutrality legislation on Thursday, while approving the larger telecommunications bill (269-152) (PDF). Cnet has an interview with Verizon's lobbyist, Thomas Tauke, "the most ecstatic...in Washington about now." Internet freedom advocates of It's Our Net vows to continue lobbying the Senate to include the Net Neutrality protection amendment. Noting that the web 2.0 front hasn't taken a united lead in the grassroots Save the Internet campaign, WebPro News wonders aloud if the internet is naturally bound to head the way of TV, toward asymmetric distribution with pacified if dissatisfied users.

Joining the ranks of Amazon, Yahoo and eBay in the call to arms for web freedom, Google publishes the view of "Chief Internet Evangelist" Vint Cerf:

"Allowing broadband carriers to control what people see and do online would fundamentally undermine the principles that have made the Internet such a success...A number of justifications have been created to support carrier control over consumer choices online; none stand up to scrutiny."

Lawrence Lessig and Robert W. McChesney published a great commentary in a WashPost article (via Blogscoped), the day of the House vote:
"Congress is about to cast a historic vote on the future of the Internet. It will decide whether the Internet remains a free and open technology fostering innovation, economic growth and democratic communication, or instead becomes the property of cable and phone companies that can put toll booths at every on-ramp and exit on the information superhighway."
Continuing the debate, this weekend Craig Newmark compared Net Neutrality to Martin Luther's fight, while today a WashPost editorial provides an opposing view.

A compromise to secure a protective amendment is still out of reach in the Senate, which will begin hearings on net neutrality tomorrow and begins voting on amendments as part of the larger communications reform bill next week.

Melanie and I are ready to start up the Searchblog interview series again. So far, I've talked to Jim Lanzone, Gary Flake, and am mid interview with a couple of other folks (including Marissa Mayer from Google.) But who do you guys want to hear from? I'll do my best to get them to talk!

From ZDnet:

...eBay unveiled this weekend a new, automated keyword-based contextual ad system for use by its partner network.....The new automated eBay AdContext product differs from eBay’s current manual ad placement system for promotional partners. Currently, partners create their own selection of eBay ads on their Web pages, by manually entering specific keywords and categories as search terms in order to return listings. eBay AdContext, however, will automatically read the content of the Web site—which may change daily—and surfaces ads that are most relevant to that content.

For now, this is only on eBay....but...More on this soon.

From an interview in the LA Times:

Q: Is Google a media company or a technology company?

A: It's better to think of Google as a technology company. Google is run by three computer scientists, and Google is an innovator in technology in our space. We're in the advertising business — 99% of our revenue is advertising-related. But that doesn't make us a media company. We don't do our own content. We get you to someone else's content faster.

Now, it's true that Google gets you to other people's content faster. That's the basis of the media revolution I've been on about for some time now .

But to equate Google not doing its own content with a free pass from the media company classification is, well, absurd. That presumes that media companies only make packaged goods - traditional content - and ignores the fact that the majority of media companies in a post web world (and plenty in the pre web world) are not "creators of content" they are innovators in the media experience business in one way or another. Is Comcast in the media business? After all, they really are only distributors of content. EMI Records? Well, they don't "make their own content" - the musicians do. What about FM? We don't "make content" - and we do have a technology platform. But don't tell me we're not in the media business.

Same for Google. The search engine is inherently a media tool: it innovates in the assembly of useful information. Now, let's talk about the other media products in Google's arsenal: Google Finance? Check. Google Video? Check. Blogger, Google Answers, Google Base, Map, Book Search, Earth, Images, Local, Catalogs, News, Mail....check check check!

I'm quite sure the folks at Google are aware of this, and this is most likely an issue of competitive semantics, in the end. First, media businesses, in the main, command far lower valuations on Wall Street than technology businesses. Bill Gates had this same issue back in the 1990s, as I pointed out earlier. And second, the entire media world is fearful of Google; insisting you are not in their business is a placating calculation. But my two cents: No one is buying it.

Continue reading "Reader Tom Writes:" »

Missed that Forbes is predicting a June 28 release for GBuy, the PayPal competitor.

Consumers using GBuy, which is set for release on June 28, will be taken off the merchant's site to complete the payment. This will enable Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) to capture e-commerce transaction data, driving more precise targeting in future searches.

Given how important this particular launch is to Google, I am sure it will be a good product, not the spaghetti against the wall we sometimes see. However - and as odd as this might sound - I am not sure the world is ready to trust Google with its payments. I sense the overall cultural vibe on Google is that it's gaining too much power. Folks are starting to wake up to the whole ephemeral to eternal riff. The Times is banging the table about it nearly every week (see this front pager from Sunday, or today's story, for example, which kindly quotes me.) Soon, the networks will pick it up. And then....

Maybe it's not such a bad idea to hang fire...

I knew The Search had been translated into Hungarian because a family friend who speaks it told me so, but still, it's cool to see it - "Keress!"

I like the sound of that.

(thanks Adam and Eni)

Synch Firefox Toolbar between browsers
Google adds a Firefox toolbar synch tool between browsers, announced on the Google blog.

The Fragmentation of Search
Fred argues that the the drop-down search engine menu (in Firefox and now IE) belies a future where specialized search tools dominate.

Top Searches at CIA.gov
The CIA publishes a monthly zeitgeist list of top 25 search phrases on their website, in compliance with the Freedom of Information act. (via Matt Haughey on MetaFilter.)

Is the Google empire spread thin?
Sparked by mixed reactions on Google's SpreadSheets, GigaOm opens a poll on whether Google users think Google is wasting its genius capital or distributing it well. Also, he asks "Should Hollywood fear Google?"

Competing interests
Hoover, a business intelligence company, publishes the list of the top 100 companies searched for on their website. (thanks to Gary Price )

Google Lobbying
"Woefully underdressed" or not, Google's serious about its lobbying efforts in the beltway.

I had the pleasure of being interviewed a few times by the authors of "eBay and Google: A Coopetition Perspective," a term paper of sorts written by two Haas School of Business 2006 MBAs (they both graduated this year). Despite my participation, Julien Decot and Steve Lee have written an insightful and data-packed paper - 44 pages in all - that exhaustively details how Google and Ebay depend on each other, and what stresses the two companies' relationship will suffer as they increasingly find themselves in competition.

In fact, as they researched the paper over the course of the year, the authors came to the conclusion that eBay had no choice but to ally with either Yahoo or Microsoft. Then the Journal reported as much, and the Yahoo/eBay deal went down.

If you love data (they estimate 12% of all eBay traffic comes from Google, for example), financial analysis, and competitive scenarios, this paper is for you. There is an entire section on "next moves" which I also recommend. The authors have allowed me to post it here (PDF). They would very much like to hear your take on it. Remember, this is the work of students, not industry experts, but it's quite valuable nonetheless.

Some typical analysis from the paper:

"(the) main takeaway from our analysis: assuming the profit margins from their current businesses remain similar to their current level, or worse, if they face increased margin pressure, it is pretty likely that eBay will consider seriously entering the online advertising market at this point....

...Based on our high level projections, we can foresee a mismatch between demand and supply
that could possibly induce some price pressure on Google’s core ad market. Moreover, in order to
reach revenue levels built into Google’s valuation, Google will have to enter markets outside of online ads."

Sure, you could argue that's obvious, but it's sure nice to see the data laid out, and the arguments made, and there's a lot more to the paper than just that. The authors did a lot of original research (like the graphs above showing customer segmentation), and peer into markets where both companies might logically strike next.

The best part about this? After graduation, the authors are going to work in the Valley - one for eBay, the other for ... Google.

(via Melanie, admittedly belated)
Last week Google unveiled Ajax Search API (Beta)--its experimental dynamic search module that blogs and websites can place can use to place complimentary content to their sites while their readers can access/clip content (samples). Optional search categories are parsed into local, video, web and blogs; while users can manipulate the look and layout of the beta widget (demo). Google is actively pressing for constructive feedback from developers with the accompanying Ajax Search blog. Since it was released last week, a few responses from around the blogosphere:

O'Reilly: For Google this is about distribution and getting on more websites. By making a rich UX accessible for little work they will get even more people willing to put their results on their pages. Assuming they add advertising (which is mentioned as an "if" in the FAQ) then the uptake will definitely increase - especially if site-owners are able to share in the AdSense revenue (it's not surprising to note that the AdSense question was the first one asked in Developer's Group).

SEL: This is a good move for Google - they've apparently learned their lesson from the Google Maps API. Let the development community figure out what you're good for :)

The week's buzz is rising on MerchantCircle, a local search play with a twist. I spoke to CEO Ben Smith this week, and he got me smart on the idea behind it. In short, MerchantCircle is trying to get local merchants to play the search game on their own terms, and I like that idea.

SiliconBeat has some good thoughts on it:

...MerchantCircle has pre-populated its database with generic business listings. Business owners can then sign in to claim their profile pages.

...Smith doesn't view MerchantCircle as a destination site for users. Most people won't go here looking for a local bike shop, although you could. Instead, they'll find MerchantCircle profiles when they're Googling for Palo Alto bike shops, for example.

The "circle'' in the company's name comes from the idea that merchants will create networks of affiliated businesses by adding their names to their profile pages and swapping ads with each other. The idea is to give merchants an incentive to invite other merchants into MerchantCircle. Indeed, Smith is relying on this type of viral marketing to build his business because he doesn't have a cadre of salespeople to recruit business owners.

Garrett French has more on MerchantCircle here, as does Greg Sterling.

Dave Morgan of Tacoda pens a piece in MediaPost today which I think nails why Google has (apparently) struggled with its bid to sell ads in magazines. From it:

....the failure had much more to do with Google's inappropriate approach to print advertising than it did to print advertising's inability to deliver results for its clients.

Why? Google has not created the world's greatest all-purpose advertising machine. Rather, it has created the world's greatest yellow pages directory. There is a big difference.

Search is intent-based, just like yellow pages. It is used to generate leads. It focuses on creating immediate and measurable effects. Clicks are like phone calls.

National print display advertising is media-based or audience-based. It is about creating or influencing brand and product perceptions. It focuses on creating longer-term--and harder to measure--effects. Clicks are not like creating warm, fuzzy feelings about driving a Jeep up a mountain.

Dave also discusses differences in sales approach, creative, and the like.

But I'm more bullish on the idea, generally, because at the end of the day, what Google I think is trying to do is take over the back of the book, or marketplace section, of most vertical magazines. These are the fractional ads that clutter up the last few pages of most titles like PC World, Stereo Review, and the like. Here, I think, Google could really have a field day, but the market is so scattered, it might take quite a long time for it to find traction.

But....I'm very pleased to see this kind of silly, out there stuff coming from Google. From InfoWeek:

Two Google research scientists want your computer to watch television with you so it can deliver personalized Internet content at the same time.

In a research paper presented last week at interactive television conference Euro ITV in Athens, Greece, Google researchers Michele Covell and Shumeet Baluja propose using ambient-audio identification technology to capture TV sound with a laptop PC to identify the show that is the source of the sound and to use that information to immediately return personalized Internet content to the PC.

What I find strange is that, well, this solves a problem I'm guessing we won't have in about ten years, or sooner. The TV is just going to be another web application soon, and the device will be on the IP network anyway.

I like this idea.

From the Reuters coverage:

Lala.com, which allows fans to trade music discs for just $1, plus shipping, pledges to give a fifth of its sales to all the musicians, including lesser known session studio players, involved in the making of CDs exchanged on its site.

In a move that is certain to stoke controversy with music promoters, the founder of the Silicon Valley start-up said Lala will circumvent traditional copyright and royalty payment systems to compensate identifiable working musicians.

The site works something like an eBay auction exchange as it encourages consumers who sign up for the service to list all the CDs they may want to exchange as well as ones they would be interested in receiving.

Tom has the scoop on Cox, a cable ISP which also happens to own a lot of newspaper assets, blocking Craigslist. The culprit is a third party filtering service, but....apparently Cox isn't exactly rushing to fix this. It's been three months. As Tom points out, it's not like it takes three months to delete a site that was mistakenly put on a filtering blacklist.

PS - I love the tagline Cox uses for its digital services: "Your Friend in the Digital Age." Unless you use craigslist, of course.

We're listening, and shortening up these posts, and Melanie will start to post longer items on her own.
Here's some news of note in the past few days:

Korozu Byoms Launched

Yesterday, Korozu made its trial of byoms search open to the public. Byoms brings a specialized search engine (with WebMD or Wikipedia, for instance) into your IM client, and in a way that can handle natural language queries. Make byomsFedMedia as a buddy, for example, to use a byoms selected by Korozu or create your own. As SEW notes, "In order to get the most out of the byoms, the searcher really needs to know their source and which search terms to use; a regular search that doesn’t give good responses isn’t going to be much better if consulted via an IM client."

Yahoo revamps MyWeb
A MyWeb update promotes socializing with picture contact cards, a browser of users who use similar tags, and expansion of searchability to all public pages, as well as added export features.

Quote of the Day
"But as charming as he is, Schmidt runs Google about as much as much as the Dalai Lama runs the world's spiritual life." --Elizabeth Corcoran, "Who's Really Running Google?" the first in a series for Forbes

Googlecheckout.net/org/info registered
ZDNet speculates deduces that Google is behind the registration (though held by another company) and speculates the domains will be used to create a shopping cart system for websites. "Maybe one day Google will even provide an inventory management solution with an API so websites can have their inventory in Google Base and on their own website without double entry."

Harvesting the 2004 Presidential Election
Internet Archive has made keyword searchable the 2004 Presidential Term Web Harvest ---a special collection of about 100 million items of web material. "This harvest was intended to document Federal agencies' presence on the World Wide Web at the time that the Presidential Administration term ended in early 2005." From Resource Shelf.

Sheet Music Consortium

A collaboration between UCLA, Indiana, Johns Hopkins and Duke, the Sheet Music Consorium is creating a collection of digitized sheet music, with additional contextual data and advertising imagery. (via Resource Shelf)

Turn Here

Turn Here launches, offering free short professionally-shot travel videos of a local's walk around the neighborhood for tourist-destination spots--from Berkeley to the East Village. The narrative product placement model used was shown to be more effective than in-stream ads in a study, and offers a neat tie-in potential with map search.

Ask Blog-Feed Search
Ask caught up to the blog search game on Thursday by jump-starting Ask Blogs & Feeds, coordinated with Bloglines. Added features include: Bioculars to preview posts, a handy tabs for favorite and feed subscriptions, and ordering the search results by popularity, relevance and post time. Ask blog search also lists the top post searches and feeds.
Search Views points out that "Not everyone is in love with it ...but at the very least Ask's blog search is trying out unique ways to reduce junk results (we're looking at you, Google) and determine relevance - even if all the kinks aren't worked out on day one," and points out a couple good reviews by Michael Arrington at TechCrunch and SEW.
Also, check out the notes for advanced search user at Resource Shelf from Gary Price, who had a hand in developing the new search.

I've written a lot about Google and its decision in China - I've always thought that the company had a chance to lead here, but talked itself into doing what everyone else has done. In fact, back when Google was just getting into China, I wrote:

The Real Irony Here...is that Google is, for the first time, being a content editor. I've written extensively about how Google, by its very DNA, does not like to be an editor of content. But in China, it's doing exactly that.

Google's first big editing job? Deciding which sites to exclude because they might offend the Chinese government.

There's still time to pull out, guys. I've read your rationalizations, and Uncle Bill's as well. I don't buy them. I don't buy that this is what, in your heart, you believe is right. Sure, I understand the logic. But, well....in your heart, is this what you wanted to do? No? Then why did you do it?

Now comes this news from the AP: "Brin says Google compromised principles."

From the story:

Google Inc. co-founder Sergey Brin acknowledged Tuesday the dominant Internet company has compromised its principles by accommodating Chinese censorship demands. He said Google is wrestling to make the deal work before deciding whether to reverse course.

Meeting with reporters near Capitol Hill, Brin said Google had agreed to the censorship demands only after Chinese authorities blocked its service in that country.

...Google's China-approved Web service omits politically sensitive information that might be retrieved during Internet searches, such as details about the 1989 suppression of political unrest in Tiananmen Square. Its agreement with China has provoked considerable criticism from human rights groups.

"Perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense," Brin said....Brin said Google is trying to improve its censored search service, Google.cn, before deciding whether to reverse course. He said virtually all the company's customers in China use the non-censored service.

"It's perfectly reasonable to do something different, to say, 'Look, we're going to stand by the principle against censorship and we won't actually operate there.' That's an alternate path," Brin said. "It's not where we chose to go right now, but I can sort of see how people came to different conclusions about doing the right thing."

My goodness. My My My.

Recall what Eric Schmidt said just a short five weeks ago? "Eric Schmidt, the Google chief executive, used the recent relaunch of the company's brand in China to reaffirm his commitment to the territory and made it clear that Google has no intention of confronting China's ruling Communist Party over online restrictions."

My my my.
(thanks, Philipp)

Second Update: Hugh has given us unlimited invites (thanks Hugh!) and a process for making this easy. I'll have this done asap.

Most likely you are painfully aware of how bizarre and seemingly inscrutable the pricing schemes are for airline travel. One day you might get a fare from SF to Boston for $400, the next it's $335, and the day after that it's $500. Why? Well, airlines have shitloads of data about historical pricing; they understand the supply and demand curves for every market, and they know when they need to sell more seats, boost margins, or compete to win business. They take advantage of all that data to push a price at you that suits them, and they're very, very good at leveraging algorithms to drive maximum revenue. It's frustrating as hell to use an online service like Expedia to try to beat the airlines at their own game - it simply isn't the right interface. Not to mention, Expedia's real customers are the travel companies - not you.

I got a chance to talk to Farecast founder Hugh Crean earlier last week, right before I penned this missive on not being able to do reviews. And in fact, this is not a review of Farecast, as much as I wish I had time for that. However, Hugh did spend a few minutes showing me around the site, and I found what it does really interesting, though for different reasons that perhaps others might.

You can sign up for the private beta on the homepage, it'll be out later in the year. The basic premise is neat - Farecast pays attention to the market price of all airline fares out of particular cities (it only does Boston and Seattle for now) at all times (it uses an industry data feed that, unfortunately, does not include Southwest). It then uses this data to help forecast when the right time might be for you to buy your ticket (and get the best price). In short, it's a rip off detector for flights. Farecast leverages the power of data to put you back in charge, or at least more in charge.

What Farecast does is shift the power of information back into the consumer's hands, and that's why I like it. I remember when the web was young and the first car buying sites were up and running. Dealers scrambled for that early business, and I bought two cars off the web by forcing dealers in the Bay Area to compete for my business. It really felt like the web was going to change the dynamic of who was in charge in a car buying transaction - because I could force dealers to their best price, I was always going to get the best price. It felt like this would be the model in most large transactions, like travel, loans, etc. Price would stabilize, and folks would differentiate on service, relationship, and approach.

But something funny happened on our way to internet mediated bliss: the big companies figured out how to game our demand. Dealers realized they can make more profit if they cooperate and withhold pricing information from the aggregators, and the aggregators got into bed with the supply side of the equation (if you think AutoByTel or Expedia is on your side, you're kidding yourself). Nowhere is this more true that in how an airline prices its tickets.

I like how Farecast puts the consumer back in control of the data. The interface is very slick and the idea is quite promising. So I very much wish Farecast well, and I'd love to hear about other services which disrupt other markets where access to data is so one sided.

Hugh has given me 25 invitations to the private beta, if you're interested, let me know in comments below.

Update: Hugh has emailed me and upped my invite limit to 150. But give me some time to get them out to you....

Continue reading "Reader Phillip Writes..." »

From the WSJ:

Google Inc. plans on Tuesday to release a Web-based spreadsheet application, according to people familiar with the matter.

Google Spreadsheet, which will be made available on a limited test basis, follows Google's March purchase of a company offering a Web-based word processor called Writely.

The two Google Web-based applications represent possible challenges to Microsoft Corp.'s core personal-computer software business. Microsoft's Word and Excel dominate the word processing and spreadsheet markets.

Update: Gary points out that there is another player out there already in this market, Zoho Sheet. I have to say, this is simply the other shoe dropping (and there are more coming). As a Mac guy, who just bought a Intel Mac, I'm wondering if I ever have to buy Office again. I already use Apple Mail....

From research sent to me by JP Morgan (this link may work):

Google recently posted an entry on its website that suggested the company would begin showing fewer ads on queries where they may not be relevant, and more ads on queries for which the ads may be useful. The changes were to take place over several weeks, beginning sometime in April.
· In 1Q, we began conducting a study to monitor changes to Google's search engine results pages (SERPs). Our survey included 20k+ keywords, and we tracked the coverage, the number ads, and the positioning of ads.
· Our survey identified a 19% increase in the number of queries with three sponsored links above the algorithmic results. Thus far in 2Q, we have identified the 3rd link on an average of 7.6% of queries, compared to 6.4% at the end of 1Q.
· We believe Google prefers to show the 3rd link on commercial queries. The categories with the largest 3rd link exposure QTD were 'Shopping & Classifieds' (18.3% of queries), 'Travel' (12.9% of queries) and ‘Business & Finance’ (11.8% of queries).
· We believe these changes will lead to higher CTRs and CPCs, all else being equal. We are therefore increasingly confident that the company may report upside to our 2Q estimate. Google continues to be our top pick, and we believe the shares will show material appreciation by the end of the year.

(via Melanie)
John was just considering taking-on a 500-hour product review of Windows Vista, but as luck would have it, Tom's Hardware got to it just before him. It's a very thorough walking through of every new feature with screen shots, in a total of 40 pages.

(via Melanie)

Technorati is offering a preview of its new microformats search tags and Pingerati, its new microformats router -- still simmering in trial-mode in the Technorati Kitchen. Microformats search expands with three new tags for contacts (hCard), events (hCalendar) and reviews (hReviews), providing automatic data updates from any type of site (previously limited to blogs) to ping search aggregators. Pingerati then provides a channel to translate human-directed announcements into microformat-ready html. Together the new microformat rypes and Pigerati help avoid redoubling efforts to create content for computers and humans, eliminates manual pings, and broadens the richness of search in microformat standards.

Tantek Çelik, Chief Technologist Technorati who has helped pinoneer in the microformat standard, writes, "Microformats are the key building block, the lingua franca, that make structured information open and sharable on the Web... For me personally, this has meant enabling millions of people to take control of their own data, publish and update it wherever they want, whenever they want, and move it freely among services, without having it locked up behind a walled garden or trapped in a 'roach motel'."

From his post:

Try explaining the difference to authorities between a blog, a splog and a website that is trying to make money from any of the many, many affiliate marketing programs that also happens to host adsense or other ad publishing network ads.
...Hackers have figured out that they look a lot more legit getting checks from google than trying to wash 10k dollars in cash delivered in a bag.

Continue reading "Reader RBA Writes" »

The past few months have not been fun. I feel like I've let you, my community of readers and conversants, down, and I've failed to do what I really love to do - think out loud about what all this really means.

Why this mea culpa? Well, you all have called me out in the past, and this time, I wanted to be in front of the curve. As I wrote back in August: "It's real work to write a good site, even when you have the support of an entire community. It needs at least a few hours a day, if not more. Just responding to the PR requests, along with doing original reporting, can take up to half a day."

I've said before that the reason I started FM was to create the company that will, in the end, allow me to get back to what I love to do, which is to make sites like this. But we're not there ... yet. The more we work on FM, the more I believe we'll get there. We've been growing in the double digits in sales month over month over month. Great advertisers like GM, Intel, Absolut, and scores of others have joined us, and we're at nearly 60 sites with dozens more coming in the coming months.

But in the meantime....

....every day I get about 20 or so pitches from really great companies with really great ideas. They just want an hour, or half an hour, or 15 minutes to give me a demo of their great new application, or product, or launch, or new feature. And I wish I had nothing but time to actually take those calls, and see all that great stuff, and then write up my thoughts.

But I don't. I'm running a startup, and a major conference, and I need to focus on that. Just trying to get back to everyone that contacts me takes more time than I have to give. But because I'm odd, or anal, or both, I take the time to email back, or call back, and try like mad to schedule those demos if I can.

But it has to stop. I'm canceling more calls than I'm taking, and I'm disappointing a lot of folks - especially folks who actually take the time to show me something, only to find out that I don't have the time to post on what they've spent years developing.

So, unhappily, I have to redefine what I'm going to do on this site, and, I hope, get your input on what you want.

From now on, I propose that there will be no product reviews on Searchblog. None - not even reviews of new stuff from the majors like Amazon, Yahoo, Google, or AOL. Instead, we'll focus on two things.

One, Melanie, who has been doing a great job of rounding up news on a two to three times weekly basis, will be posting as news comes in, keeping all of you abreast of noteworthy items in the search and media space. And two, I'll be writing more thoughtful pieces of analysis, probably less frequently, but with more consideration (I hope). But reviewing products? Not going to happen in the near term. Sure, I'll note the quick this or that (like the DOJ requesting that all Internet companies keep a two year Database of Intentions), but I can't take the time to learn about every new product in the space. So all you folks in PR - take note. I can't do it anymore, and I hope you understand. I'll be pointing you to this post from now on. Please keep us in the loop (ie, send releases!), and I hope to get back to the trenches soon. And please, let me know what you think. I value your input more than you know.

... 55 Ways, in fact. Philipp Lenssen has a website, Google Blogoscoped, that I read every day. When he told me he was working on a fun book about Google, I was excited - he's a great observer of all things Google, and in particular, the funny, fun, and obscure. His book is now out - I can't wait to read it. Way to go, Philipp!

Nope, not kidding. From USAToday -

Top law enforcement officials have asked leading Internet companies to keep histories of the activities of Web users for up to two years to assist in criminal investigations of child pornography and terrorism, the Justice Department said Wednesday.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller outlined their request to executives from Google, Microsoft, AOL, Comcast, Verizon and others Friday in a private meeting at the Justice Department. The department has scheduled more discussions as early as Friday. Last week's meeting was first reported by CNET, an online news service.

Great summary sent by email to me by Robert Peck of Bear Stearns:

Google held a Q&A conference call with analysts yesterday. There were 10 incremental takeaways from the call including the following: 1) Breakthroughs Likely in Branded Advertising Over the Next Year; 2) No Plans to Introduce a Browser at the Moment; 3) Google Base Won’t Be A Large Separate Site; 4) Wi-fi Deployment Effort To Increase Usage of Google; 5) Behavioral Targeting Holds More Promise Than Demographic Targeting; 6) Rising Competition Should Benefit Google and Yahoo / Keyword Prices Should Continue to Rise; 7) Quality Scores Are Keyword Based Only / Testing Improvements to Current Model; 8) Dell Deal to Be Cash Positive to Google Over the Term of the Contract; 9) Local Search is a Significant Portion of Their Business; 10) Traction in China and Korea Will Take Time.