Industry News from Nov and Dec 2006

A Happy New Year to everyone and also my apologies for not updating the blog for the last couple of months .It's been really hectic with lots of projects and work , however am back to writing regularly now .

I will use this post to highlight major news events for November and December 2006 , along with links where the full version of the story can be accessed

News Stories : November


Google in a bid to halt YouTube Legal Threat:

Google is engaged in a frantic round of negotiations aimed at persuading traditional media companies to supply their content to YouTube, the video website it bought last month for $1.65bn, and ward off a potentially crippling round of lawsuits.Read More


Yahoo Asking Users To Rate Usefulness Of Search Results

I know Yahoo had a crappy “Weather Update” just over a week ago…
When I checked my rank reporting program today, I noticed some more dramatic movement in Yahoo across several sites and keywords…
So, I went directly to the source and began keying in some searches at Yahoo and noticed something I haven’t seen before at the top of the results: Read More


How Much Should SEOs Earn

This is going to be a tough and contentious issue and one that isn't easy for me to write about. Along with the obvious internal conflicts of interest in disclosing salary numbers, there's bound to be a lot of companies and individuals who will come away feeling that my numbers are wrong (or that their employers are cheating them). That said, it's a topic that needs to be addressed and if my experience can help (and inspire others to open up with their own data), then the accomplishment is well worthwhile.Read More


Google's Schmidt Grilled At Conference

Eric Schmidt, chief executive officer of Google, sat in the hot seat at the keynote session for the Web 2.0 Summit on Tuesday. He was asked to explain moves such as the YouTube acquisition, the company's employment strategy, and their "office suite," which he does not like to call an office suite.

John Batelle, founder and chairman of Federated Media Publishing and author of "The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture," got the rare privilege of being able to ask Schmidt whatever he wanted for a little over 30 minutes. Read More

IACI's Ask.com Gaining Search Share

October brought us another month with Google (GOOG) losing a little steam. Month-over-month Google web-search market share was off 0.2ppts (not much…). The number of unique searches on Google actually increased 2%. However, the overall unique queries posted to the top-20 search engines actually increased 2.4% in October (more than Google’s gains). Since October 2005 Google’s share was still up 6.1ppts and remained the reference standard for the industry with over 62% market share. Read More

Yahoo Buys Site for Staging Online Contests

Yahoo is acquiring Bix.com, a site that allows users and advertisers to create, enter into and judge online contests. The deal is an attempt by Yahoo to bolster its offerings in social media, an area where it has struggled to compete with sites like MySpace and YouTube. Read More

Google Video France Sued For Copyright Infringement

The producer of "The World According to Bush" has taken legal action against Google for distributing the film for free, becoming the latest media company to seek compensation for lost business on the Internet.Read More

Seven Challenges of SEM Planning and Execution

Interesting article on the MediaPost Blog commenting on the common challenges faced by SEM teams to get high search performance.Read More

Search's Long Tail and SEO

At first blush, it would appear that chasing long tail search referrals would be a natural extension of PPC advertising. Unfortunately, it's difficult to sustain long tail campaigns in the major search engines, given the low CTRs inherent to long tail search queries, an annoyance that can put extensive long-tail-oriented keyword lists on hold.
Long tail search referrals are the onesies and twosies we find in the dregs of our log files. These referrals can be two-, three-, four-, and even five-word combinations that form distinctive, nearly unique search queries. If not PPC, how can we possibly pursue the long tail? Read More

Alexa can be injurious to your wealth

Every so often you meet entrepreneurs and venture capital investors who talk about Alexa ranking of a web-based service, using it as some sort of a yardstick for growth and reach. It is as good general, non-specific indicator, say if the traffic is going up or down, but to make money-decisions based on Alexa rankings is, well living dangerously.Read More

News Stories : November

Danny Sullivan’s Last Day at Search Engine Watch

Danny Sullivan is left Search Engine Watch after 10 long years in an editorial capacity. The post below is an excerpt from his message that he posted on the SEW site.

Today is my last day with Search Engine Watch, with me heading to my new digs at Search Engine Land tomorrow. I wanted to wish Search Engine Watch all the best going forward, plus help readers understand some of the changes that are happening. To do that best, I thought I'd go all the way back to the beginning, to the birth of Search Engine Watch. Read More

Craigslist: Not Your Average Business Model

There's been some interesting discussion around Craigslist's appearance at a financial analyst conference, wherein Craigslist flummoxed the assembled pundits by saying that they don't have any plans to charge for listings (beyond the limited charges they already make). Read More

New social search engine, Decipho, launched today

A new social search engine called Decipho was launched today.

Here are some of the major features of Decipho:

1. Decipho filters the search results by user preferences and breaks them into categories. It is able to do this by allowing users to categorize the results --­ shopping, info & categories of their own choosing­-- and the storing them for future searches and allowing others to see what websites were ranked and for what category.

2. Another unique feature Decipho offers is the "My Results" section. While logged into your account, when a website you have already ranked appears in another keyword search, the system will pull out that search listing to the top right side (next to general results) even if it is listing number 40. Read More

Newsknife names top news sites of 2006

The folks at Newsknife have just announced the Top News Sites of 2006. Their list is compiled by analyzing a sample of 438,330 individual site listings at Google News by 4504 sites for 1768 news items during year.

The Top News Sites of 2006 are:1 ABC News2 New York Times3 Reuters4 Washington Post5 Times Online, UK6 Forbes7 Guardian Unlimited, UK8 Voice of America9 Christian Science Monitor10 International Herald Tribune11 Bloomberg 12 CNN Read More

Mamma.com Launches New Video Search Engine

Mamma.com has launched a Video Search engine in Beta format.

In conjunction with the Pixsy Media Search Platform, Mamma.com now offers its users video search capabilities that provide visual searching based on relevance, categories, photos and videos. For example, users can enter a query into the Mamma.com search box, hit the Videos tab, and pull relevant results from numerous video content providers. Read More

The above story concludes my press clips for the major news stories in the Online Marketing sphere for Nov and Dec 2006. High Time :):) Moving on to January in the new post .