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round up

Spotting the right image xcavator identifies photos with similar combinations of color swatches–by color characteristics and placements chosen by the user. At the moment, this unique image search trolls Flickr for its demo. Brokering a digital Alexandria The University of California Library system is considering a partnership with Google…

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Spotting the right image

xcavator identifies photos with similar combinations of color swatches–by color characteristics and placements chosen by the user. At the moment, this unique image search trolls Flickr for its demo.

Brokering a digital Alexandria

The University of California Library system is considering a partnership with Google to scan and make searchable “34 million volumes from 100 libraries on 10 campuses” (link). If the UC decision overcomes contentious debate about scanning copyright protected materials, the UC will join six other libraries sharing with Google. via

Stop Badware

Google now serves a warning before directing a user to a site reported to the ‘Neighborhood Watch’ campaign committed to fighting malware. StopBadware.org, led by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the Oxford Internet Institute, will also begin providing site-specific reports on badware cautioned pages.

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Finding your search buddies

There's a new social service that pairs search users in part by their similar queries, as well as pages visited in web browsing and preferred interests. Others Online stands out from many social sites with its browser toolbar that when activated passively records demonstrated interests. While a user is…

Picture 4-4There’s a new social service that pairs search users in part by their similar queries, as well as pages visitedPicture 2-17 in web browsing and preferred interests. Others Online stands out from many social sites with its browser toolbar that when activated passively records demonstrated interests.

While a user is browsing they can check the Others toolbar to see who else is reading or interested in the topic or site, and a dropdown provides contact to their IM or email details—including a link to their MySpace profile or other social website.

So what this means is…. Every time you search Google, you see the people who relate to those same keywords, plus their Web pages, and you can connect with them instantly by IM or email.

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Triumvirate against click-fraud

Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft announce they are joining forces to combat the click-fraud storm (both reality and accusations). The big three search engines will use their shared expertise, touching 86% of the game. The competitors plan to create common guidelines for clickfraud— starting with defining it, then facing the…

Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft announce they are joining forces to combat the click-fraud storm (both reality and accusations). The big three search engines will use their shared expertise, touching 86% of the game. The competitors plan to create common guidelines for clickfraud— starting with defining it, then facing the complexities of tracking it.

Picture 8-2AP: John Slade, senior director of Yahoo’s defense against click fraud, predicted the alliance’s guidelines “will be a game-changing step in measuring and fighting click fraud.” It may take more than a year before the guidelines are finalized, said Greg Stuart, chief executive of the Interactive Advertising Bureau. The decision to develop the guidelines reflects the Internet industry’s “commitment to being the most accountable advertising medium and providing marketers with the highest level of transparency,” Stuart said.

(Slashdot, AP)

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round up

Live Spaces Windows Live Spaces launches. TechCrunch notes: …Live Spaces is taking over MSN Spaces completey – MSN Spaces pages now redirect to Live Spaces URLs. This is no small decision, because MSN Spaces is currently the largest blogging platform with over 100 million unique monthly visitors. Toolbar packaged…

Live Spaces

Windows Live Spaces launches. TechCrunch notes: …Live Spaces is taking over MSN Spaces completey – MSN Spaces pages now redirect to Live Spaces URLs. This is no small decision, because MSN Spaces is currently the largest blogging platform with over 100 million unique monthly visitors.

Toolbar packaged

Google Toolbar bundles with Firefox into a new multi-year package with RealPlayer: Real regularly distributes more than 2 million pieces of software a day worldwide. When users install RealPlayer, they will be given the option also to install either the Google Toolbar or Firefox.

Yahoo’s new domains

It seems Google isn’t the only one on a domain spree, as Yahoo has 11 new domains of its own. Including Yahoo-aromatherapy.com. (via ResourceShelf)

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round up

Slurp Yahoo! inaugurated a new search crawler, Yahoo! Slurp last week, professed to be swifter and more efficient. "As a result, site owners will notice as much as a 25% reduction in the number of requests and bandwidth consumed by the crawler…Owners should see a much lower crawl load…

Slurp

Yahoo! inaugurated a new search crawler, Yahoo! Slurp last week, professed to be swifter and more efficient. “As a result, site owners will notice as much as a 25% reduction in the number of requests and bandwidth consumed by the crawler…Owners should see a much lower crawl load without a loss in content coverage.”

Disclosing invalid clicks

AdWords is now sharing data on invalid clicks with advertisers, as a new report feature in their account. (thanks wisegeek)

Search 2.0 v. traditional

Read/Write Web writes a comparative survey of the landscape, part one and part two: How is traditional search evolving to Search 2.0? Perhaps a better way to look at this: how is traditional search evolving to become more personalized and specialized?

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round up

Google settlement The judge in the Google click-fraud case approved the $90m settlement—in credits, Google is pleased but 500 drop-out from the class-action. (Battelle talked earlier about this. ) AP: By settling claims made in the plaintiffs' class-action lawsuit, Google will give advertising credits that are the equivalent of…

Google settlement

The judge in the Google click-fraud case approved the $90m settlement—in credits, Google is pleased but 500 drop-out from the class-action. (Battelle talked earlier about this. ) AP: By settling claims made in the plaintiffs’ class-action lawsuit, Google will give advertising credits that are the equivalent of a $4.50 refund on every $1,000 spent in its ad network during the past 4 1/4 years.

Picture 4-3AOL Video

Time Warner introduces AOL Video search (with upload and sharing capabilities) that will offer on-demand video and TV shows like South Park, in addition to free content. TechWeb writes that the technology backbone is from Truevo and Singingfish, which AOL purchased last Dec. and in 2003 respectively. Planned to launch Aug. 4.

Picture 6-4Hot eye-tracker study

A web navigation study finds the upper left of the search results screen attracts the majority of attention, with about 45% of user clicks within the slightly larger F-shaped area. Research at the University of Hamburg finds: the Web moving from static hypertext information to dynamic interactive services. Clickstream heatmaps and web page statistics show rapid interaction over smaller areas of the screen.

About 33% of searches contain 2 keywords, over 88% contain only 2-3. (from SEW)

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Cutts’ instruction video

SEO guru Googler, Matt Cutts posts a few short vlogs on best and worst SEO practices, on Google Video of course. (Hmm, any YouTube users thinking the same thing?) In a few short segments Cutts answers some questions sent in by hats of all colors, discussing what really matters…

Picture 3-7SEO guru Googler, Matt Cutts posts a few short vlogs on best and worst SEO practices, on Google Video of course. (Hmm, any YouTube users thinking the same thing?) In a few short segments Cutts answers some questions sent in by hats of all colors, discussing what really matters to a crawler and how to optimize, dispels some SEO myths, and champions user experience.

Is this the new Cutts vlog? Perhaps not, his ever SE-orientated audience quips it’s not crawlable, “It’s also bad for your SEO, Matt!”

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Dig into Sandbox.Google.com

A curious guy, named Tony Ruscoe, was digging though one of Google's many latent registered domains and found some interesting stuff. On the Sandbox subdomain (recently serving Checkout), Google is running experimental services. Although existing user names don't permit log-in, Ruscoe says he was able to create a new…

A curious guy, named Tony Ruscoe, was digging though one of Google’s many latent registered domains and found some interesting stuff. On the Sandbox subdomain (recently serving Checkout), Google is running experimental services. Although existing user names don’t permit log-in, Ruscoe says he was able to create a new account on Sandbox and add new services, currently unavailable to regular users.

In the experimental bin sandbox.google.com, added 14 services to his “sandbox” account. Some of these are already disclosed, so only the surprises are listed here: Google Events, Google Guess, Google Online Assessment, Google Real Estate Search, Mobile Marketplace, New Service (AKA Workplace), and New Services.

Highlights: * Google Guess, as Ruscoe writes, “How many guesses do we get? This really could be anything!” * Google Online Assessment, he speculates is an internal tool–again, pretty vague. * Google Real Estate Search. * New Services has “code names like cf, gmt and voice.”

* Mobile Marketplace: Maybe number 13 in John Battelle’s Predictions 2006 post will come true. Maybe Google will finally plug mobile “into the web in a way that makes sense for the average user” and maybe they’ll also be the ones to create “a major mobile innovation – the kind that makes us all say – Jeez that was obvious.” But we’ll see…



* New Service (AKA Workplace): Maybe this is the big one people have been waiting for; the one that will really kill Microsoft Office. At least, if it’s at all related to IBM Workplace it could be. I don’t know an awful lot about this, so if anyone else feels more qualified to talk about it, please go ahead. All I know is that it’s got something to do with OpenOffice.org – so that’s why it could be the killer…

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privacy protection in search

If you have a healthy paranoia about one (or any) search engine caching every detail (date/time/IP/terms) of your search history, ixquick may have the answer. Icquick acts as an unretentive buffer to search with eleven top engines. Particularly interesting given the government's repeated irreverence for constitutional privacy protections, much…

If you have a healthy paranoia about one (or any) search engine caching every detail (date/time/IP/terms) of your search history, ixquick may have the answer. Icquick acts as an unretentive buffer to search with eleven top engines. Particularly interesting given the government’s repeated irreverence for constitutional privacy protections, much less respect for well-maintained corporate safeguards.

Ixquick’s Meta Search feature enables the user to simultaneously search 11 of the best search engines. However, Ixquick does not share the user’s personal data with these individual search engines in any circumstances. In addition, as of this week, Ixquick will delete the users’ IP addresses and ‘unique user IDs’ from its own ‘Log Files’.

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round up

G-Maps mobile traffic tracker Google Maps adds a mobile traffic tracker, as well as allowing users to save routes. Currently only for mobile users (in 30 metro areas, on 100 types of devices), plans are in the works to expand services to online users. Digg Labs Digg Labs goes…

Picture 2-15G-Maps mobile traffic tracker

Google Maps adds a mobile traffic tracker, as well as allowing users to save routes. Currently only for mobile users (in 30 metro areas, on 100 types of devices), plans are in the works to expand services to online users.

Digg Labs

Digg Labs goes live, unveiling new infosthetic (data visualization) tools: Swarm and Stack—previewed earlier, in the version 3 launch.

Giants don’t do ‘niche’

A great post on BuzzMachine talks about the need for specialized search, and why that means the burgeoning “Google is not invincible.”

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