October 10th, 2008
Sometime in May, Yahoo has acquired a web service company called IndexTools. Now, several months after Yahoo is making use of their acquisition with a new service Web Analytics for Business websites. This service helps to create a feedback mechanism for e-merchants, website owners, advertisers and developers. It provides data and insights which will be useful for evaluating marketing performance and tweaking website designs as well. (more…)
![]()
Read Original Post Here
Posted in SEM, Search News | No Comments »
October 10th, 2008
A very insightful thread at WebmasterWorld discusses how Google might distinguish trust and authority notions and how they might influence the algorithm.
In a very summarized manner, the discussion resolves into the following:
| |
Trust |
Authority |
| Is based on… |
A hand picked "seed list" of trusted domains" (see also "Trustrank") |
Overall quantity and quality of inbound external links |
| Role in the algorithm |
Protects you from "Google-bowling" campaign against your domain |
Matters for rankings |
| Influence |
Query-independent factor |
Query- and topic-dependent factor |
| Attributed to |
Domain |
A page |
(more…)
![]()
Read Original Post Here
Posted in SEM, Search News | No Comments »
October 10th, 2008
Blame it on comScore for publishing that 25% of Internet users play online games every week, totalling to over 200 million users worldwide. This may have prompted Google to roll out Adsense for Games. The new advertising program aims to give online game developers, online gaming site additional revenue stream.
But so as not to anger gamers, Adsense for Games would only display video ads, image ads or text ads on specific parts a particular game, selected by game hosts or game developers. This could either be in the form of interstitial frames that displays before a game starts, after a level change, or when a game is over. Hope that game developers would not be too greedy to use all those mentioned game ad spots. (more…)
![]()
Read Original Post Here
Posted in SEM, Search News | No Comments »
October 10th, 2008
Image search is evolving rapidly. Today the machine understands much more about images than just a year ago: it can read the text on the image, see its colors and classify it based on its form, shape and textures. So which advanced image search methods can we use today?
Image search based on image content
(face / landscape / photo / product image search)
Face search has been a hot topic recently.
(more…)
![]()
Read Original Post Here
Posted in SEM, Search News | No Comments »
October 10th, 2008
Recently Hakia extended a call to librarians and information professionals to help them in their quest to bring credible search results to the web on all topics. Previously Hakia offered credibility stamped health and medical searches. Expanding beyond those topics to include all is obviously a very lofty goal, and one that most certainly cannot be realized without a lot of manpower.
This week Hakia launched a new search interface featuring a tabbed option. You can search the entire web, or you can click on one of the tabs to focus your search. Options on the tabs included “All Results”, “Credible Results”, “News”, “Images”, and “Meet Others.”
The interface and results pages are very clean, which I like. It very clearly takes inspiration from Google with muted shades of pastel blue, pink, yellow, and so on, and sponsored links along the right side. (more…)
![]()
Read Original Post Here
Posted in SEM, Search News | No Comments »
October 10th, 2008
If you have shot off emails to old girlfriends at 2 am after coming home from the bar or in a rage of anger to your boss, GMail Engineer Jon Perlow has developed the perfect drunk email filter at Google Labs with GMail Mail Goggles (which counteract the power of Beer Goggles). [No, this does not seem to be an April Fools joke.]
Gmail can’t always prevent you from sending messages you might later regret, but today we’re launching a new Labs feature I wrote called Mail Goggles which may help.
When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you’re really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you’re in the right state of mind?
(more…)
![]()
Read Original Post Here
Posted in SEM, Search News | No Comments »
October 10th, 2008
Although this partnership has been announced as early as July this year, it is only now that Facebook is officially introducing or in a more industry standard term, leveraging on Microsoft’s Live Search engine. The Facebook blog has officially introduced the new feature as if it is something for us to get excited about. (more…)
![]()
Read Original Post Here
Posted in SEM, Search News | No Comments »
October 10th, 2008
All Twitter benefits and (potential) spheres of usage are yet to be explored. However it is great to see some of huge companies already taking advantage of the tool:
- To update customers of the company deals and coupon codes:
1. Dell has created a number of Twitter profiles, each meant for different types of deals (e.g. DellOutlet posts recent refurbished Dell computer offers).
2. Starbucks posts new offers and also participates in threaded discussions of these offers with their Twitter-followers.
- To offer an alternative customer support option:
3. JetBlue offers Twitter-based customer service (notice, they even provide the customer support employee’s name currently on duty).
4. ComCast offers a friendly Twitter customer support; what I personally like about their profile is the real person photo instead of the company logo.
5. TheHomeDepot “moonlights on Twitter to help their customers.”
(more…)
![]()
Read Original Post Here
Posted in SEM, Search News | No Comments »
October 10th, 2008
While John Mueller did a great job explaining how to analyze your website with Google Webmaster Tools, I thought I could outline a few tips on how to diagnose both on-site and off-site issues with Google Search and its advanced operators. (more…)
![]()
Read Original Post Here
Posted in SEM, Search News | No Comments »
October 10th, 2008
When a search engine that has an incredibly miniscule percentage of the search market share fails, does anyone listen?
Over the weekend Accoona, the same China backed search engine that had Bill Clinton speak at its launch party and was giving away cars left and right as recent as a year ago, has closed its doors.
Dear Accoona search users,
Due to an overwhelmingly competitive search market, Accoona.com and Accoona.cn will no longer be active.
We thank you for your previous support.
Sincerely,
Accoona Management
(more…)
![]()
Read Original Post Here
Posted in SEM, Search News | No Comments »
