Category: Uncategorized

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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)

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)

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.

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.