Visual Knowledge

What's The Point of A Robots.txt File If Google Ignores It?:
"...A few days ago, Rand Fishkin of SEOMOZ pointed out how Google and other engines often ignore the robots.txt files we place in the root of our sites.

My question today revolves around this same issue.

I noticed today Google indexing my images folder, even though I explicity prevent ALL SEARCH ENGINE SPIDERS from indexing that folder from various reasons. I have had this robots.txt file in the root of my site since the day it was launched and am quite annoyed and frustrated with Google for ignoring it and indexing the contents of the folder anyways.

I am curious first of all if this is something that might warrant a violation of copyright laws as some of the contents in the images folder are copyright material to the website owner and does not want his images being displayed in Google Images.

Furthermore, does anyone have any idea why Google continues to do this and how one can actually prevent the spiders from not indexing folders you specificy in the robots.txt file?

...

They obey any of them that I construct. Perhaps take a look at it again and make sure that you have done it properly www.robotstxt.org

...

Not to be too blunt but Ive been in the SEO industry for over 5 years now and alon with many seo professionals seem to encounter this quite often.

My robots.txt file is perfect - just amazing how Google does what they want.

...
robots.txt prevents compliant robots from reading content at the URL you specify. It does not, in and of itself, stop the URL being indexed - just the content at that URL.

Google supports the indexing of URLs without content. So you will sometimes see results in SERPs that contain no title, no snippet, no cache, no date, no size ... just a link to a URL. robots.txt may prevent the content at these URLs from being read, but it does not prevent the URLs being indexed.

In practice, Google will remove a protected URL shortly after it tries to retrieve the content at that URL and is prevented from doing so by robots.txt.

...
To take Alan's comments a step further:

robots.txt says "don't download content that matches this", and a robots metatag says "Don't have this content in your index". I think we need to be clear on whethe Google shows a link to a file, or actually comes and downloads a file. a robots.txt disallow makes the former acceptable, but not the latter.

Google does have, however, a tool that allows you to delete URLs you don't want indexed by reusing your robots.txt file: http://services.google.com:8882/url...d&lastcmd=login (may have to hit refresh).
Reply With Quote
#9
...
From Google:

To save bandwidth, Googlebot only downloads the robots.txt file once a day or whenever we've fetched many pages from the server. So, it may take a while for Googlebot to learn of changes to your robots.txt file. Also, Googlebot is distributed on several machines. Each of these keeps its own record of your robots.txt file.

We always suggest verifying that your syntax is correct against the standard at http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/exclusion.html#robotstxt. A common source of problems is that the robots.txt file isn't placed in the top directory of the server (e.g., www.myhost.com/robots.txt); placing the file in a subdirectory won't have any effect.

Also, there's a small difference between the way Googlebot handles the robots.txt file and the way the robots.txt standard says we should (keeping in mind the distinction between "should" and "must"). The standard says we should obey the first applicable rule, whereas Googlebot obeys the longest (that is, the most specific) applicable rule. This more intuitive practice matches what people actually do, and what they expect us to do. For example, consider the following robots.txt file:

User-Agent: *
Allow: /
Disallow: /cgi-bin
It's obvious that the webmaster's intent here is to allow robots to crawl everything except the /cgi-bin directory. Consequently, that's what we do."

InformationWeek | Patents | U.S. Grants Patent For Broad Range Of Internet Rich Applications | February 22, 2006:
"A patent has been granted to a relatively unknown California Web-design firm for an invention its creator says covers the design and creation of most rich-media applications used over the Internet. The patent holder, Balthaser Online Inc., says it could license nearly any rich-media Internet application across a broad range of devices and networks.

Potentially tens of thousands of businesses--not only software makers employing its business processes but companies offering rich-media on their Websites--could be subject to licensing fees when they use rich-media technology over the Internet.

The patent--issued on Valentine's Day--covers all rich-media technology implementations, including Flash, Flex, Java, Ajax, and XAML, when the rich-media application is accessed on any device over the Internet, including desktops, mobile devices, set-top boxes, and video game consoles, says inventor Neil Balthaser, CEO of Balthaser Online, which he owns with his father Ken. "You can consider it a pioneering or umbrella patent. The broader claim is one that basically says that if you got a rich Internet application, it is covered by this patent."

Rich media is a broad range of interactive digital media that display dynamic motion, exploiting enhanced sensory traits such as video, audio and animation.

"It's kind of unbelievable that [the patent] has such a wide ranging use because it covers so many technologies," says Bola Rotibi, a senior analyst at Ovum, an IT advisory firm in London. If the patent is enforced broadly, she says, "anybody who does anything with rich applications will have to pay royalties to the company."

That isn't lost on Balthaser, and its patent lawyer Don Pelto of Preston, Gates, and Ellis. "The considerable value of the 180 patent in the rich media and rich Internet applications areas cannot be understated," Pelto said in a statement. "

Scobleizer - Microsoft Geek Blogger » Um, doesn’t this patent have prior art?:
"Um, doesn’t this patent have prior art?

You know the world has gotten a little nutty when a Microsoft guy complains about a patent, but when Matt May last night at the Podcast Hotel told me a company is trying to patent AJAX, among other things, I was amazed when Matt said this patent looks like it tried to patent AJAX. I haven’t looked at the patent (the patent lawyers ask employees to refrain from looking at patents) Then he passed me a Slashdot article on them today.

We call some of this kind of behavior “patent trolling.” (I haven’t looked at the patent in question, so don’t know if it’s legitimate or not, I’m not a lawyer and all that). What’s a patent troll? A company gets a patent that it itself isn’t willing to commercialize in a product, but goes around to every company threatening that it’ll take everyone to court. Demands a licensing fee. Usually something like $20,000 to $150,000. And repeats, often stopping short of the big guys with the deep pockets (although in this case it looks like they are pitching it to the big guys).

Why does this work? Well, I interviewed one of our lawyers recently and he said that a patent case, if it goes to trial, will cost millions of dollars to defend. So, of course everyone settles out of court if the fees are far less than a potential loss in court.

The commenters over on Slashdot are unusually lucid on this topic. Makes for fun reading.

As usual, my disclaimer particularly applies here. This is my personal opinion and may or may not agree with anyone else’s opinions, in particular my employer’s. I haven’t checked with anyone else at Microsoft before writing this post.

What do you think? What should the responsibility of big companies be here?

Here’s an article in InformationWeek about this patent and the breadth of what it covers."

Yahoo! Search blog: What's been going on with Yahoo! Answers?:
"It’s hard for us on the core product team to believe that it’s only been 2 months since we launched the beta of Yahoo! Answers. Since then, we've added many features to the site in a steady stream of improvements. So it seems like a good time to catch you up!

To refresh, Answers is a question and answer exchange that enables people to tap into the collective wisdom of a world of web users.

Here’s a few of the new features you’ll find:..."

Yahoo! Search blog: Going deeper into the Wikipedia:
"Going deeper into the Wikipedia

We've been a big fan of Wikipedia for a while now, and we've been working together with the Wikimedia folks to make the Wikipedia even more accessible and easy to use. Now, as part of our larger effort to get people more answers in fewer clicks, when you see a Wikipedia result in Yahoo! Search, we'll also include a section of links directly to the main sections of the Wikipedia entry, so you can quickly get to the exact information you’re looking for.

Just one example of how this can be useful: here at Yahoo!, we get free coffee as a perk of the job - nothing like a quick pick-me-up to start the day. Since I'm a health-conscious gal, I think a quick search for coffee is a good idea.

wiki-coffee.png

As you can see, the Wikipedia result now has a link to Coffee bean types which tells me that robusta coffee has more caffeine that Arabica. Speaking of caffeine, the link to the Wikipedia section on Sources of caffeine tells me that cup of tea might have less caffeine. After all, sleep deprivation. can have some pretty serious Effects on the brain. Maybe I'll just have a glass of water.

Let us know what others kinds of information might be interesting and useful for us to highlight in the future."

John Battelle's Searchblog: Ask Makes Its Play:
"... Ask, which has declared its intention to become the Fox of the search engine world - in other words, to come into the game late, with low odds, and hope to strike ratings gold. We knew this play was coming - it was clear when IAC and Diller bought Ask. Now the company has declared. Steve Berkowitz, CEO of Ask.com. throws down the gauntlet in the release:

“People deserve a search engine that gives them the tools to get what they need faster, not just a bunch of links on a page. Ask.com takes search to the next level.”

You're not sure they're serious? Diller is keynoting this week's SES conference, for goodness sake (I won't be there, focusing on FM then traveling to London later this week). More on all of this in the Ask Blog here.

Gary Price, who is joining Ask from SEW, has some interesting thoughts here.

A summary of the news: As expected, Jeeves is history. It's now Ask.com. Teoma.com is no more, it's been rebranded as "ExpertRank". Ask has a new homepage, a new customizable "toolbox" function, an upgraded Maps feature, and some other features which you can read about in their release here.

What I find interesting is Ask's decision to compete based on differentiation of approach to sponsored listings.
From the release:

Ask.com now has the fewest ads of any major search destination on the first screen of results. With Smart Answers, Ask.com is also the only search engine to place editorial results above advertisements.

More on this as it develops."

John Battelle's Searchblog: When One Company Gets Visits From Google:
"Interesting note from an entrepreneur - what he's learned from his logs."
Perenety

Xavier Casanova’s Blog | Coffee, Sun & Technology » Articles » A Bloggers’ Theory:
"I’m committed to limiting my time investment in blogging (see rule #14), so let’s get to the point: looking at analytics data and correlating with market events, blog posts, other bloggers’ comments, etc - I’m seeing a pattern for readership growth.

The basic cycle goes like this:

(1) Seeding. You start a blog, write 8 or 10 interesting posts, and advertise your blog as much as possible (link on your email signature/forums/etc). Soon enough, another blogger will write about you or point to you (blogroll, etc).

(2) Exponential growth. After reaching some critical mass of readers, readership growth accelerates all of the sudden - typically because a popular blogger has written about you, or there is a press article pointing to your site.

(3) Organic growth. Your base keeps growing but it’s slooooowww. You’re incapable to sustaining the growth rates you had in phase 2.

Basic cycle

The challenge then becomes to reach out to another community of readers, and starting this cycle again (or wave). For example, if the initial community was the “Web analytics gurus” - maybe your next community will be “Search Engine Marketing gurus”. In this case, you need to start the seeding cycle again.

cycle

In the context of this simple theory, it’s important to note that the characteristics of the communities you are targeting will determine how successful you’ll be. Community characteristics such as:
(a) Size: the “Search Engine Marketing” community is much larger than the “Web analytics” community
(b) Viral quality: the “Venture Capital” community is a lot more inter-connected than the “people with blue eyes” community
(c) Maturity: According to some studies, only 8-10% of Americans regularly read blogs. If there is no blogging culture in a given community, it’s going to be a lot harder to seed.

As far as this blog is concerned, I’ve seen 2 waves already: Web analytics gurus (started in ~Feb 2005), then the Google analytics followers (~November 2005). Now working on a new wave…

[Read related articles: “Using Web analytics to drive more traffic to my site” series - part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 part 6 part 7 part 8 part 9 part 10 part 11 - and Blogging success: “what lessons have you learned“]."

ResearchBuzz: Lexxe -- Natural Language Search Engine With Clusters:
"...Lexxe, a natural language search engine that also offers results in clusters. Lexxe is in alpha and available at http://www.lexxe.com/.

The front page has a query box and also some sample, Olympics-related questions that you can ask. I didn't choose any of the available ones, instead asking What is Skeleton?. Despite the fact that the word "skeleton" makes it a bit of trick question, Lexxe gave as its first result the Wikipedia entry for Skeleton-the-sport. There was also a dictionarylike "Answer" at the time that gave more traditional definitions of "Skeleton".

Clusters show up on the left. The clusters for this particular question include "Human Bones," "Olympic Sport", and "Anatomy". Unfortunately some of the clusters also looked fairly useless: ".Search", "Results", and "World's". A couple of them were cute ("Key" and "Closet".) Results include title, snippet, URL, and page size; click on a cluster and the search is rerun with the cluster words included. For example, Run What is Skeleton? then click on the Human Bones cluster, and the search will be rerun as What is Skeleton Human Bones. There is some goofiness going on with what words are included in the search; What is Skeleton? Human Bones Human Skeletal had more results than What is Skeleton? Human Bones. You can "drill down" through clusters, though Lexxe seems to get slower and slower as you do so. I got all the way to What is Skeleton? Human Bones Human Skeletal Anatomy Bone Yahoo and decided things were getting too weird.

I noticed that some of the Answers at the top of the page were not very useful. For one search result my answer was "skeletal system the following links will allow you to access real photographs of the human skeletal system" with no link. Just a sentence fragment.

I thought the results of Lexxe were pretty good. You have to be careful choosing your clusters, though, they vary a lot in quality. Further, drilling down more than one or two clusters deep doesn't seem to offer a lot of good."

Search Engine Journal » Digglicious - Digg Meets del.icio.us:
"A colleague sent me over an email last week about Digglicious, an AJAX hybrid of Digg and del.icio.us where bookmarking meets social voting. The site is a bit of a novelty, but could prove to be a fine alternative to watching reruns of Three’s Company at 4 in the morning. Albeit full of information overload, something similar may serve well in vertical industries such as search, feeding off of del.icio.us, Digg and a search news monitoring service.

Digglicious describes their service:..."

Google sees growth slowing, largely organic: report - Yahoo! News:
"The chief financial officer of Google Inc. (Nasdaq:GOOG - news) on Tuesday said overall growth is slowing and is largely organic, according to cable network CNBC.

The company will now have to 'find other ways' to boost revenue, according to the television network.
The stock was down 11 percent, or more than $42, after the report. "

Search Engine Journal » Link Baiting eBook : Viral Copy:
"...Brian Clark of Copyblogger.com has put together a guide on Link Baiting which is available for PDF download called Viral Copy. Brian lists 11 ways to build links to your site via online publicity and viral tactics, and lists multiple examples (including our Search Blog competition link baiting case study)..."

NARA on Google Video:
"NASA History of Space Flight Motion Pictures
This selection of nineteen 'Headquarters Films (HQ)' preserved in the National Archives, represent a series of over 250 titles collected by the NASA Office of Public Affairs between 1962 and 1981. They were produced using footage from the various NASA research facilities and space flight all..."

TechCrunch » Exclusive Look At Google Payments:
"Google announced last week on their blog that they will begin to facilitate payments on Google Base in the near future. The blog post from Google pointed out that Google are already accepting payments on their video service as well as when users purchase software such as Google Earth and that this will be extended further in the near future. The latest updates to Google Base, which we have been able to take a good look at, is to compete directly with eBay by not only allowing sellers to post items to base, but also by facilitating the transaction through Google Payments (see this blog post on purchasing via Base from the Google Base team).

To see some items on Google Base that are accepting payments via Google go to base.google.com and search for either ‘xyzzy‘ for a list of items with payments enabled, or ‘magic unicorn beanie‘ for a particular item. The first thing you see is that a price has been set and you can see that the payment method that is accepted is ‘payment through google’. While ordinary users now won’t get an option to purchase these items, we managed to get some screenshots of how the process will look and work. The next set of screens show the items that had a big ‘buy’ button on them so that the user can purchase them:..."

» Google Page Creator: retro, or part of a future Web Office Suite? | Web 2.0 Explorer | ZDNet.com:
"...I have to wonder why in this day and age people still need a static 'homepage'. It's so very retro. Blogger would suit the Moms and Pops much better and is just as easy to use. The real story, I suspect, is that Page Creator is destined to be a part of Google's impending Web Office Suite.

Just as Frontpage is a part of MS Office these days, I'll wager that this AJAXy 'Web Page Creator' is but an early - yes, beta - version of something that will be added to Google's future Web Office Suite."

Search Engine Journal » Yahoo Search Marketing to Ban Trademark Keyword Ads:
"In an answer to some of the legal battles and issues concerning competitive bidding on Trademarked Terms, Yahoo Search Marketing is banning bids on Trademarks come March 1st. Yahoo has issued the following email to some of their advertisers.

“On March 1, 2006, Yahoo! Search Marketing will modify its editorial guidelines regarding the use of keywords containing trademarks. Previously, we allowed competitive advertising by allowing advertisers to bid on third-party trademarks if those advertisers offered detailed comparative information about the trademark owner’s products or services in comparison to the competitive products and services that were offered or promoted on the advertiser’s site.

In order to more easily deliver quality user experiences when users search on terms that are trademarks, Yahoo! Search Marketing has determined that we will no longer allow bidding on keywords containing competitor trademarks.”..."

ResearchBuzz: Yahoo Releases a Couple New Things:
"The Yahoo Developer Network has announced a couple of new products that are about fifty feet over my head, but maybe y'all get some use out of them.

The first thing is the Yahoo! User Interface Library. The library, about which you can get more information at http://developer.yahoo.net/yui/, is free for developers' use and available under an open-source license. The page notes that in order to use the various components of the library you'll have to install them on your server -- Yahoo does not host them. The Y!UIL Components fall under two categories -- core utilities (animation, drag and drop, event, etc.) and UI controls (calendar, slider, TreeView.)

The second thing is the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library, available free and released under a Creative Commons license. It's at http://developer.yahoo.net/ypatterns/. Actually this one is not so over my head. It shows a series of solutions to problems in Web design and user interaction -- breadcrumbs, instant rating, search pagination, etc. Each page includes a little movie of how the solution is used on a Yahoo property, rationale for using it, and hints for accessibility. Be sure to look at the right side of the page which includes pointers to where the solution is used on Yahoo, blog article, etc. (Yahoo User Interface blog: http://yuiblog.com/blog/.)

A couple of times I wanted more information than was available. For example, when I read about the solution of auto-completing forms, I thought, "Hey, sounds great, but I have no idea how to do that." Look to the right side of the nav bar. Code Example Coming Soon! Um, yeah. Actually I could have done with many more pointers to coding the solutions, or to introductions to Web design from-a-usability-point-of-view."

More Search Patent Applications and Blog Search Research Paper:
"Gary Price has two new posts that make for some good weekend reading.

The first is named New Academic Paper Offers a Review of Weblog Searching which links to a 13 page PDF. Here is the abstract;

We present an analysis of a large blog search engine query log, exploring a number of angles such as query intent, query topics, and user sessions. Our results show that blog searches have different intents than general web searches, suggesting that the primary targets of blog searchers are tracking references to named entities, and locating blogs by theme. In terms of interest areas, blog searchers are, on average, more engaged in technology, entertainment, and politics than web searchers, with a particular interest in current events. The user behavior observed is similar to that in general web search: short sessions with an interest in the first few results only.

The second is named More Patents and Patent Apps for Microsoft and Yahoo which has five links to patent applications, mostly from MSN. Here they are;

* System and method for employing social networks for information discovery
* Suggesting a discussion group based on indexing of the posts within that discussion group
* Automatic categorization of query results
* Method and system for creating an embedded search link document
* Method and system for providing a disposable email address

Enjoy the weekend reading, I know I will."

Google Payment News:
"Google is rolling out payment functionality on top of Google Base, the official Google Base blog says:

“For buyers, this feature will provide a convenient and secure way to purchase Google Base items by credit card. For sellers, this feature integrates transaction processing with Google Base item management.

We’re starting with a very small number of sellers and we expect to include more over the next several months.”

Also, the official Google Blog gives an update on payments, basically saying that yes, Google already handles payments in a lot of services, and yes, they’ll continues to add payment to services where this makes sense. Like Google Base, I guess. Which is now one step closer to becoming that eBay it has made out to be by some in the beginning, even though it still lacks an auctioning system and an actual community. But what happens if Google tomorrow decides to freely advertise Google Base products on the right hand side of Google web search results for related keywords (getting their money back by commissions from actual Google Base sales)?"

Google Video Adds Video Categories:
"Philipp Lenssen reports that Google added Google Video Categories. Visit http://video.google.com/ and look at the top of the page, you will notice these categories.

Popular Animation Educational News
Google Picks Comedy Movies Sports
Random Commercials Music videos TV shows"

Why Google and Yahoo Both Love eBay:
" eBay Inc. is the number one and number two sponsored link advertiser for both Google and Yahoo!, reports Nielsen/NetRatings. Dwarfing other advertisers in the top five, eBay and eBay's Shopping.com have spent more on search marketing than Target and Interactive Corp. combined (and then some).

In January, Google served up 984,204 eBay sponsored link impressions, and 447,591 for Shopping.com. The third biggest spender at Google was Interchange Corporation' s Local.com (279,250 impressions), followed by Target Corp. and Interactive Corp.'s Expedia, Inc. with 218,140 impressions and 197,329 impressions respectively.

Yahoo!, during the same time period raked in 537,137 sponsored link impressions from eBay and 501,195 from Shopping.com. The nearest advertisers were Apollo Group's University of Phoenix (151,642), Interactive Corp.'s Lending Tree (116,303), and Target (79,013)... "

Techworld.com - SAP designing new search engine:
"SAP is planning an extension to its search capabilities with the next major release of NetWeaver.

The search enhancement will allow SAP users to blend searches across unstructured and structured data. SAP now offers search engine technology as part of NetWeaver. It will extend those capabilities for structured search, according to Lothar Schubert, director of SAP NetWeaver.

"Currently, [search] is used in knowledge management to search for unstructured data. We are extending search into the SAP repository to have a more holistic search," said Schubert.

Josh Greenbaum, principal at Enterprise Applications Consulting, said that up until now the worlds of structured and unstructured data have been very separate and that there was little technology that links them at the analytical level. A single search across both domains will allow companies to maximize their information assets by giving them a more comprehensive picture.

"The inability to link structured and unstructured data is a huge loss to companies that are trying to figure out where they are going," said Greenbaum.

With a blended search, a user could submit a query that asks to find all the invoices that are 30 days late. The reply would include the receivables but also copies of the actual invoices from a document repository matched up to the line item.

While Google and other players have desktop search for unstructured data such as e-mails and IMs, now that information can be combined with customer address, sales history, and sales order information from a data warehouse, CRM and ERP systems, and customer data integration technologies, said Schubert.

"SAP owns the metadata and is in a strong position to deliver a strong search technology for that structured information as well as in unstructured," said Schubert.

The ability to deploy in-memory technology is one of the drivers behind the significant increase in interest in search. In the past users had to rely heavily on databases and file systems. Now indices can be compressed and the system can hold those indices in memory and run significantly faster searches, said Schubert.

While some competitors may have this kind of hybridized functionality, what is important is that this is coming from SAP where many companies may have a lot of information locked up, according to Greenbaum.

In its drive to create automated business processes driven by business intelligence, SAP is also expected to increase what Schubert called "event-driven business intelligence" and its business activity monitoring capabilities in the near future."

ResearchBuzz: Lots of Lists with Listable:
"This is a nifty idea. Have a place where people can make lists of various online resources, share the lists, comment on them, and vote on the Web resources included in the lists. Potentially quite useful! I just wish there were more comments and a couple extra features... Listable is in beta at http://www.listible.com/. (And if I pay attention I can get through this whole writeup without typing Lunchables instead of Listable.)

Listable starts out with several different lists on the front pages, as well as pointers to RSS feeds and a tag search box (popular tags are shown as well.) At this writing lists on the front page include 'Best 'Music Recommender' Websites', 'Free blog hosts', and 'K2 Styles for Wordpress'. I did a search for Firefox and got 3 results, choosing to look at 'Best Firefox Extensions for Power Users'."

I Will Pay You To Use My Search Engine. No, I'm Not Desperate.:
"FEBRUARY 24, 2006

You would think that "build the best search engine and they will come" as a strategy (and a mantra) would do the trick in getting users to your search engine. No more, at least not for MSN, which is now offering cash prizes to users who use their search engine (Yahoo! is also considering getting into the game, as it were).

Can a sweepstakes approach to search work? It is true that iWon.com employed this concept with its search engine when it launched in 1999. However, MSN is not a gambling site and the folks there seem to be aware of some possible PR issues: by throwing into the mix the prospect of directing one's winnings to a charity they may be preempting criticism that the company is venturing into the territory of promotional bribery.

How does it work? MSN has a secret list of keywords, and should a person happen to plug one of these words into the search engine, a link will appear telling the person that they may have won a prize and that they need to fill out additional information to enter the lottery. MSN's official rules tell us that the odds of winning are approximately 4,000 to 1.

Some individuals in the search engine marketing community have reacted to this idea with trepidation, the main fear being the eventual devaluation of the ad space related to keywords. Bryan Wiener, president of search engine marketing firm 360i, in a conversation with OnlineMediaDaily, probably spoke for many search engine marketers when he said "From the marketer's perspective, it raises a bit of a red flag any time you have to incentivize users to use your service. We would have to get a real understanding of whether people were using the service because it was delivering the best value."

Gary Stein, a search expert, also in conversation with OnlineMediaDaily, expressed his distaste for the idea. "It's desperation--it's terrible. It's just not a good idea at all," he said. "Any time you're in a position where you're paying people to use your product is a bad situation. People should be wanting to use your product because it's a good idea. Is it hard to catch Google? Yeah. Nothing's been successful so far," he said. "But this is the lowest level. It's not something that a valued brand would do."

Time will tell if MSN can put a good spin on this. In the meantime, an anonymous poster at Threadwatch.org, who examined the service, had this to say: "The fact that the winning box goes where the ads normally go shows that they are really incentivizing ad clicks. I hope none of my clients ever end up featured as one of the lucky target phrases."

To read more on this subject, look for eMarketer's forthcoming research report on Search Engine Marketing, due in March 2006. If you would like to be notified when this report is available, click here."

High-Speed Hesitation:
"Broadband is the preferred access technology for most Internet users in the US, but according to the Yankee Group, there are still plenty of people who are sticking with dial-up.

Recent data from Ipsos Public Affairs found that 37% of online households in the US used dial-up by December 2005, compared to the 61% who used broadband.

The Yankee Group estimates that dial-up will gradually decline through the rest of the decade, accounting for less than 20 million online households by 2009, far less than the 65.7 million broadband households in the US by that time. This means dial-up will represent less than 30% of all households with Internet access. Broadband will gain not only from dial-up's decline, but also attract those users who are new subscribers to Web access.

So why are some dial-up users resisting the tide? According to a new survey from the Yankee Group, the most common reason US consumers don't subscribe to broadband is that it's too expensive. Despite promotional price cuts for DSL (which often cover slower connection speeds and eventually expire, shooting the price up), broadband is more costly than dial-up, especially for truly high speeds. Presumably, dial-up consumers have little need for tasks beyond e-mail, IM and simple Web browsing, which are doable through broadband, and want to keep their monthly expenses low.

Price isn't the only factor. More than 30% of consumers say that they just don't want broadband, and about 14% say they feel dial-up is adequate for their needs. Less than 10% are not able to get broadband access in their area.

As Yankee points out in a recent brief on this subject, this survey demonstrates that there are some ways operators can entice dial-up users to make the switch, mostly involving price. Lowering the price of broadband, or making less costly options available, could convince more stragglers to up their speed. But they face a harder time convincing those who feel that they just don't want it. Bringing these people over requires an educational effort that demonstrates the advantages of high-speed access, a process that could take a while.

To learn more about the US broadband market, read eMarketer's North America Wireless Trends report."

Nothing to Do? Let's Search the Internet!:
"FEBRUARY 22, 2006

It has long been assumed that the Internet was used as a tool for specific purposes such as conducting research, checking the news, shopping or visiting a favorite Web site. However, new data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project suggests that approximately 40% of Internet users go online "aimlessly" without clear goals or intentions. Haven't we heard this before? Yes, but in a different context: "Honey, give me that remote and let's see if there's anything good on TV tonight."

The Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that the Internet is the new TV—but not in just the obvious sense that more people choose the Internet over reruns of "Seinfeld." Instead, the study points to a growing phenomenon that is analogous to TV: web surfing is equivalent to channel surfing. E-mail remains the primary online activity, with 52% of respondents describing it as their "leading activity." However, 40% listed their main activity as "surfing for fun to to pass the time."

The Pew report also shows that browsing the web for fun grew dramatically in 2005 from 2004 because only 25% of respondents indicated that they browsed for fun in 2004.



The Pew report also shows that broadband users and young adults tended to go visit the Web without particular destinations in mind whereas senior citizens and users with dial-up connections tended to go on the Internet for specific reasons.



So what does all this mean for marketers and advertisers? What new challenges does this create for the industry as a whole? Early on, when the commercial Internet began to take hold, the industry quickly recognized that the beauty of the Internet came down to the degree to which advertising could be accurately targeted. But if Internet users are beginning to emulate their television-watching counterparts by just surfing and hanging out, will this mean that the targeting model will founder?

No doubt the industry will realize that keyword search engine marketing will probably remain its bread and butter, whereas the idle-surfing implications will have greater resonance in the arena of banner advertising. Further to that, "just surfing for fun" will undoubtedly increasingly include online video. The need to find video, via search engines, will increase accordingly. Marketers will need to find ways to take advantage of this video/search growth, such as by creating elements of their overall campaigns that throw fun marketing videos into the mix.

To read more about online video advertising, see our report Online Video Advertising: Promises and Challenges and look for eMarketer's forthcoming research report on Search Engine Marketing, due in March 2006. If you would like to be notified when this report is available, click here. "

Google unveils Web page creator | CNET News.com:
"Google launched on Thursday a service that lets people create their own Web pages hosted by the Internet giant.

Google Page Creator, which is in beta, has sample layouts and lets people type in content, upload images and publish their pages, without knowing HTML. People can create multiple linked pages and are allowed 100MB of storage on the service.

The free service requires a Gmail account and supports either Internet Explorer 6.0 or Firefox 1.0, or higher.

With Page Creator, the company has drawn a distinction between Web sites and Web pages, saying that a page is a 'single document with its own Web address,' whereas a site is a 'collection of pages with a common subdomain,' or the 'xxxxxxx.com' portion of the URL. 'During this initial testing period,' Google said, people can create only pages, not sites.

Google already owns Blogger, a company that enables people to create blogs. The company also recently launched a service offering hosted e-mail accounts with an individual's chosen domain, instead of Gmail."

Search Engine Journal » Google Definitions SEO : Glossary & Patent:
"A post at Threadwatch raised my attention the other day about Optimizing for Google Definitions. In the post, Graywolf introduced that when phasing a search query as a question on Google, Google now delivers the first ‘organic listing’ as a definition. Definition rankings above advertisements, News or Froogle results have led to some questions on how such important Definition placement can be achieved..."

Perfect 10 Photo Site Wins Injunction Against Google Image Search:
"News.com reports that Nude photo site wins injunction against Google. This could have a rippling affect on image search as we know it today.

Perfect 10, an adult photo site, has proven to the court that Google's image search thumbnail copies are a violation of U.S. copyright law. This past Friday, U.S. District Judge A. Howard Matz, ruled that Google has violated the law 'by creating and displaying thumbnail copies of its photographs.'

Google plans to appeal the case, but the main reason documented as to why Google lost the case is two fold. First, Google monetizes image search with AdSense of those sites that have pirated the images of Perfect 10. Second, Google has image mobile search, which enables users to save a downsized version of the image to the phone, that image is 'similar to what Perfect 10 offers as a subscription service through U.K.-based Fonestarz' and could hurt Perfect 10's revenue and earnings.

Gary Price has posted the full text of Google/Perfect 10 decision, 48 pages, at ResourceShelf as a PDF.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our SEW Forums thread,
Nude Photos
Get Google in Trouble Over Copyright Law."

Cost Per Keyword Spikes to $55 During Holiday Season:
"A MediaPost article reports on DoubleClick's Performics data released recently that shows the overall 'cost-per-keyword' 'rose to around $55 in December, from around $26 at the end of August.' The 'cost-per-keyword' is made up of 'cost-per-click with the volume of clicks,' which basically represents the cost of all the keywords and clicks for an advertiser over a month, divided by the number keywords in an advertisers bucket. A 107 percent increase in click volume from the fourth quarter of 2004 also helped the cost per keyword to rise to $55. Keyword prices are expected to level off somewhat, since the holiday season is over."

Another Big Brand SEO Company Banned by Google?:
"Recently we had the well-known and discussed traffic power ban and now it looks like a big name SEO company based in the UK has been banned from Google. I have never heard of them, but the forums are buzzing about BigMouthMedia being de-listed from Google. Several current searches show that BigMouthMedia not listed as #1 for its own brand name, also no results for the site command.

Ammon Johns at Cre8asite asks; 'is this a new sign of aggressive defence of its algorithms by Google?'"

Google Building Out Artificial Intelligence?:
"A WebmasterWorld thread named Book Scans - Google making an AI? discusses an old article by George Dyson. In that article it says that he was told by a Google employee that; 'We are not scanning all those books to be read by people. We are scanning them to be read by an AI.'

That applies to Book Search but what about Web Search? Would the next generation of Web search involve AI? That is what is being discussed at WebmasterWorld now. Most think that AI will play a huge role in Web search of tomorrow. How exactly is the question."

Can Yahoo do content? | CNET News.com:
"...Yahoo's plan to become a major Internet content player is treading water. Yahoo Media has lost ground to rivals in key areas and has yet to goose advertising sales with a runaway content hit, which many expected Braun to deliver when he arrived with fanfare in November, 2004.

Growth at the Web sites in Yahoo's media corral has been mixed, according to figures from ComScore Media Metrix, a New York-based research firm. Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Games, for example, both lost readership last year. In fact, Microsoft's MSN Money site now brings in more unique visitors than Yahoo Finance, though Yahoo Finance still leads on total page views.

'Yahoo's in a good position. But it still has a question about content,' said a source familiar with Yahoo's media ambitions who asked to remain anonymous...

...Yahoo's strategy has always been to develop a little original content, and license a lot of other content, and focus on user generated stuff..."

AOL, WebEx team up for new AIM services | CNET News.com:
"AOL is expected on Tuesday to launch two new versions of the company's instant message service that are designed specifically for businesses.

In a partnership with Web-conferencing leader WebEx Communications, AOL is launching the tentatively named AIM Pro. One AIM Pro package will target small businesses and the self-employed, while another is intended to appeal to larger companies. Both will differ from the free AIM service by offering a customized interface, additional security, voice, video and Web collaboration capabilities, the companies said in a statement..."

TechCrunch » Foldera: Never organize your inbox again:
"Huntington Beach, California based Foldera’s goal is to organize all of the chaos surrounding work based documents (email, calendar, office documents, instant messaging, etc). It is a very big idea.

The company is in private beta right now, with a full launch on the way.

Foldera’s approach to productivity is in direct conflict with the way we use applications like Outlook today (just think about how much time we all spend organizing our inbox, filing emails, etc.). Foldera has a better approach (one that seems rather obvious now that I’ve seen it) and they have a chance to seriously disrupt upcoming product launches like Office Live from Microsoft.

Most of us are used to working with email folders today, where an email message can simply be pulled into a folder for easier discovery later. The idea around Foldera starts there. They’ve created an Ajax rich web application that includes email, calendaring, instant messaging, document storage and versioning, tasks and other features into a single web application. Everything is folder-centric:

How does this work?

You create a dedicated Activity Folder for each distinct project or activity. Email, instant messaging, and all your other applications are now accessed from within this folder instead of their original disconnected and unstructured state. This organizational structure also keeps everything in context; for example, all your email conversations and instant message dialogs stay right inside that specific Activity Folder, so everything related to that project stays grouped together. Doesn’t that make more sense?

Do you work with other people?

To truly appreciate what Foldera can do, try using it with a team. Everything you create with Foldera can be shared or kept private, delegated, owned, or distributed among one, several, or all members of a team. Unlike some collaborative applications, Foldera is easy to use and requires virtually no learning curve. If you can send email, you can use Foldera.

Richard Lusk, Foldera’s CEO, met with me late last year to show me an early demo of the product. The idea is that you create a folder around any new project. Share that folder with others or keep it private..."

InformationWeek | Search Engines | Yahoo's Challenge | February 20, 2006:
"Yahoo faces many challenges as it tries to turn vast sums of data it has on visitors into revenue. Another challenge: that little company called Google.

By Thomas Claburn - InformationWeek - Feb 20, 2006 12:02 AM

The world's in love with Google and search-based advertising. That leaves Yahoo, the Google of the '90s and still the most popular destination on the Web in terms of visitors, to prove there's a better way to deliver advertising. But to do that, Yahoo needs to translate the 10 terabytes of data a day its visitors create and turn that raw information into marketable insights.

Listen to Yahoo's chief data officer, Usama Fayyad, sell the story.

Yahoo's chief data officer Fayyad knows if you're about to buy a new car.
'Search advertising is great. I can match ads to intent,' Fayyad says. 'Well, guess what? When you're on the Yahoo network--whether it's travel, whether it's autos or researching universities--you're telling a lot more about yourself and your intent. And I can use that. I can turn that into a very powerful ad-matching machine, just like search is. In fact, in many cases, much more powerful than search. It's just that the market hasn't discovered it...

...It's an IT-intensive challenge. The 425 million users who visit Yahoo each month generate a data trail that amounts to 10 terabytes a day. And that's just usage data. It doesn't include E-mail or images...

...They're mining data collected in Yahoo's data centers, which are costly and, for the most part, hidden from view. There are 27 of them, more or less, around the world, filled with between 100,000 and 200,000 servers...

...Keeping costs in line as it battles the highly automated Google is a priority. It will take new services, features, and marketing to make Yahoo more competitive, enhance its image, change perceptions, and bring in more revenue...

...Yahoo also is more diversified than Google, with 12% of its revenue coming from user fees. As for advertising revenue, Marianne Wolk, a financial analyst for the Susquehanna Financial Group, estimates that 58% of Yahoo's ad revenue in 2005 came from search advertising, while 42% came from contextual ads designed to promote a brand. For Google, only 3% to 4% of its ad revenue came from advertising unrelated to search..."

Google Desktop 3.0 may pose security risk News - PC Advisor:
"...Google Desktop 3.0 is the latest version of Google's desktop search application. The software's 'search across computers' feature allows users to seek out information stored on other PCs and servers. To do this, Google stores an index of files contained on a PC running the software for 30 days, promising that the information is encrypted and accessible to a limited number of Google employees, according to Gartner.

While the 'search across computers' function offers a measure of convenience, allowing this data to leave the safety of a corporate network is a concern despite Google's assurances, Gartner said. 'Its mere transport outside the enterprise will represent an unacceptable security risk to many enterprises,' it said..."

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | 'Click war' as Google rivals get serious:
"...An article in the financial magazine Barron's has warned that Google's stratospheric market capitalisation could be abruptly halved should its model of business receive any comparatively mild knocks. One scenario is a decline in the market for key-word advertising. The price advertisers pay to Google when users click on their links after a key-word or phrase search depends on market forces - for instance, the number of similar services prepared to pay for Google to direct search traffic their way. But there are complaints that Google searches cost advertisers too much.

Online advertising revenue last year grew by 34 per cent, to about $13bn, compared with just 4 per cent linked to TV, radio and print ads. How long that will last is uncertain. Firms including eBay and Travelocity talk of 'unsustainable levels of spending' on search advertising; Barron's says a phrase such as 'charity car donation' now costs the advertiser $35 when their site is visited. The phrase 'home equity loan online' will cost $27.89.

Clearly, with billions of ad revenue dollars sloshing around the search engine business, Google's big rivals will be willing to pay for a market share. But advertisers must believe online ads are value for money. The 'pay per click and search' model does not guarantee a sale after all, and the system can be easy to abuse with software trained to click on ads repeatedly. In other instances 'click farms' have been contracted to drive up the cost of their competitors' advertising. By some estimates, up to 25 per cent of all clicks are fraudulent.

With Google and Yahoo! executives under oath before Congress over concessions granted to the Chinese government in exchange for access to that country's market, the news that the online search party may soon be spoiled by gatecrashers has yet to sink in. Google has lost more than $100 per share off its peak valuation over the past month, but it still has some $230 to go before it reaches the level considered reasonable by that well-known net bubble sage, Henry Blodgett - who last week said $100 was right."

Google keeps up porn probe battle - ZDNet UK News:
"The search giant is refusing to hand over a week's worth of search terms, and accuses the US Justice Department of being both cavalier and uninformed

Google lashed out at the US Justice Department on Friday, saying that a high-profile request for a list of a week's worth of search terms must not be granted because it would disclose trade secrets and violate the privacy rights of its users.

In a strongly worded legal brief filed with a federal judge in San Jose, California, the search company accused prosecutors of a 'cavalier attitude', saying they were 'uninformed' about how search engines work and the importance of protecting Google's confidential information from disclosure..."

RED HERRING | PreFound Humanizes Search:
"A new search startup looks to profit by getting searchers to shape search results.
February 18, 2006

With Google handling an increasing number of the world’s Internet searches, it’s getting tougher for rivals and startups to get respect. MSN is resorting to giveaways like digital cameras when users of its search engine enter the lucky keywords (see MSN Lures Searchers with Gifts). Meanwhile, Amazon rewards users of its A9 search engine with a discount on purchases.

Then there’s PreFound. The Lexington, Kentucky-based firm is looking to get the public’s attention by coming up with a new way to search. The company’s product is somewhat akin to search’s answer to Wikipedia, the online collaborative encyclopedia. When someone types in a search term, the results pulled up by PreFound’s engine include materials found on the web and posted by previous users.

A user searching for “sugar” on the PreFound site would pull up groups of links on the topic collected by people who had searched for the same term on the web as opposed to links simply generated through an algorithm.

PreFound appears to be an addition to the rapidly growing list of social web and search sites, which encourage users to rank and rate content based on relevance. The idea is rooted in the concept of a more democratic web that is shaped by the people that use it.

Like Wink, PreFound is also a social search engine but it is more dependent on “human indexing.”

The site, which is barely a month old, has 1.2 million links, most of which have been preloaded from the Open Directory Project, the foundation for many search engines. But in an attempt to expand its user base, it’s offering to share ad revenue with its users.

Featured Finders

In an interview last week, PreFound’s CEO Steve Mansfield said the site was looking for experts to become featured finders on the site. To do this, these experts must upload groups of links on a topic that they’ve tagged and organized on the web.

In return, PreFound will give them the revenue their pages have generated through AdSense, Google’s program that pays publishers to run ads from its network.

Providing incentives for people to contribute to PreFound is paying off. It has already bumped up traffic 300 percent, said Mr. Mansfield. But he added that such a program had to be treated carefully so that it would work as more than just a marketing gimmick.

“The problem really with for-pay social [adding] is getting good quality,” said Mr. Mansfield. “That’s why people have to apply to be a featured finder. There’s no point paying for a page no one’s going to go to.”

The concept of a social web picked up steam last year when Yahoo launched MyWeb 2.0, a product through which people can bookmark and share pages with their online communities. Yahoo showed it was serious about the space when it proceeded to buy social bookmarking site del.icio.us in December to enhance what it already had (see Yahoo Buys del.icio.us).

The problem, however, is that many of these sites are loved and used primarily by geeks and not the mainstream Internet user. And PreFound, rolled out by iLor, a research and development tank, might not be an exception.

“I think it’s a niche product,” said Rick Summer, an analyst with Morningstar. “For those of us who are geeks and understand the power of the social network, it makes sense. But will [non-geeky] people behave this way? It’s a question.”

Regular People

And to be sure, it’s primarily researchers and professors who have taken to PreFound in its early phase. But Mr. Mansfield points out that his site doesn’t require users to contribute to the site—unless they want to. While geeks can come to his site and tag and upload all they want, regular people without any interest in technology can also come by and just search.

“We want to connect the Web 2.0 community—savvy individuals who would use del.icio.us—we’re trying to connect them to the traditional world, to people who can barely use Google,” said Mr. Mansfield.

And that he could be competing with a company like Yahoo, which has millions more monthly users, doesn’t seem to faze him.

“Look at the success of MySpace,” says Mr. Mansfield. “It shows people do want to be part of a community, with little motivation other than being part of the community.”"

Search Engine Journal » Yahoo Publisher Network Confirms Revenue Problems:
"In response to complaints and accounts of droppings in earnings and revenue made via running Yahoo Publisher Network ads on web sites over the weekend, Sarah from YPN published this note on Digital Point..."

Google Account Security Breach with Book Search:
"Philipp Lenssen reports a Google Book Search Security Hole where someone can login to your Google account if they get access, somehow, to your URL string of your Google Book search result page. This is how it works; a person goes to book.google.com does a special search, clicks on a result, logs in and then copies the URL and sends it off to a friend. When the friend gets the URL and clicks on it, it should login the friend to Google as the person who sent the link, giving the friend access to Google Account information that is not his."

Google Begins Tracking All Clicks:
"We have covered the visible Google Tracking Clicks in the past. But a DigitalPoint forum thread shows how Google is also tracking your clicks, even if it doesn't look like that from the URL. Shawn Hogan explains that Google is using an 'onmousedown event for each link that calls a JavaScript function that reports the link clicked behind the scenes.' He shows the code Google is using in his post."

Google Takes the Road More Traveled:
"...Google seems to be giving in to traditional Wall Street tactics and shifting their attention toward the big money buyers.

TheStreet.com contributor Kevin Kelleher had an article on Friday that talks about Google's move to gather feedback from high-end stock buyers. Kelleher's article comes on the heels of Jonathan Burr's article about Google's shift toward traditional Wall Street thinking and their call to certain investors asking what they'd like to discuss at next month's investor's phone call.

The call, coming up on March 2nd, will aim to gather some insight into why Google's stop has experienced an 18% loss so far this year. From Kelleher's article:

But hold on: Wasn't this the same company that threw down a gauntlet in its now legendary IPO prospectus, declaring it wouldn't kowtow to the self-serving rules of institutional investors? In April 2004, the tech pundits declared that a big blow for the small investor.

Here in February 2006, it seems that losing nearly $40 billion in market cap in a few weeks can demolish a lot of ideals. Now that the chart of Google's stock has started to resemble that of a myocardial infarction, the company is keen on reaching out to investors -- not all investors, only those who bought big chunks of its secondary offering last year.

For any poor slob who managed to buy 1,000 shares in the Dutch-auction process that was supposed to change things for the better -- well, it seems you're out of luck..."

BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » Edgeio and the distributed world:
"I got a preview of Michael Arrington’s Edgeio — the classified system for the distributed future — and I think it is more important than it looks.

Edgeio as it stands is pretty simple: You tag a post on your blog “listing” and Edgeio will spot it and add it to its data base. You add more tags (e.g., “for rent” and “vacation”) and your post/ad will appear in the appropriate categories. Edgeio will allow you to come in and claim your blog to be able to get direct communication from respondents and, eventually, to upgrade your ad via typography and graphics and preference (I hope I got that right). This is just a start but it is a proof of concept of a new world. I’ve been waiting for someone to do this. Arrington has.

I’ve been writing for a long time that the future of classified advertising — and more of media — is distributed. That is, you won’t need to go to a centralized marketplace — the newspaper or even Craigslist or Monster — to let the world know you want to sell or buy or find something. Instead, you’ll be able to put your listing up anywhere with proper tags and then specialized search engines, like Edgeio and Oodle, will find them so buyer and seller can find each other in a distributed marketplace with far less friction and far more control at the edges..."

Investment Dealers' Digest:
"Media Investing's New Thing: Web2.0
Colleen Marie O'Connor (colleen.oconnor@sourcemedia.com) - February 20, 2006

Six Apart, the creator of social networking site LiveJournal and maker of blogging applications like Moveable Type, just snagged $12 million in a private round of funding from three firms, sources said last week. The series C round, rumored to include Intel, catapults San Francisco-based Six Apart into the thick of an emerging area of Web-focused investments that go far beyond search-related companies. But so far, public market access to that new industry-comprising companies that house content media properties as well as content tool makers-has been nonexistent.

That may seem surprising, given the tremors this new breed of Web-based ventures is causing at traditional media companies, even putting downward pressure on the latter's share prices. However, the new companies are hard to value, and their founders are suspicious of the public route.

In any event, these new blended companies are becoming the talk of the media investment world. "Blogging and social networking are coming together," says one source familiar with companies in the new industry. "We're coming out of the tech bubble doldrums and the next generation of media is online [content-driven companies]."

In the recent past, online search has been the star of Web-focused investing, but that's rapidly changing as investors consider what happens after users conduct a search on Google or Yahoo. Typically, they then click on the links retrieved and move on to other sites, which are chockablock with content--the new "it" zone for advertisers.

Despite the popularity of that dynamic, Wall Street dealmakers haven't been able to cash in via IPO underwriting mandates and have had to settle instead for advisory roles. "We're spending a great deal of our time on strategic advisory assignments," explains Matt Schultz, a managing director at Merrill Lynch who leads its Internet and digital media practice. "Many of these companies and their founders don't necessarily want to go the public-company route, and a sale gives them liquidity and a potentially stronger platform on which to grow."

Investment banks are playing another role as well: advising traditional media companies that are wondering what in the world they should do to respond to a media industry that is shifting at warp speed. At the moment, the dialogue is mostly about which online assets to purchase, banker say.

"The rate of change is increasing dramatically--for the first time, it's difficult for traditional media companies to look forward and have a firm view of what's going to happen," says Dan Richards, managing director in media/leisure investment banking at Citigroup. "Any traditional media company, with few exceptions, is being forced to make more difficult strategic decisions on how they move forward."

The New York Times purchased About.com last year to help gain exposure to online advertising dollars. But when Rupert Murdoch added to News Corp.'s empire by acquiring such online content properties as MySpace--a place where users list favorite pets' names and share videos of new rock bands--that industry instantly became a target.

Web advertising, while still linked to search, is now focusing on content-driven properties that attract eyeballs and hold them there, either by reading content, sharing photos, communicating to other users on the site, or playing games. Two of the more prominent examples of large-scale content sites are CNET and iVillage, often called the templates for new online media.

"The good news is, there are still plenty of advertising dollars out there for everyone to attack right now," says David Liu, managing director of the Jefferies Broadview technology investment banking group. "But it's coming to a head. We're not going to see a dogfight this year, but at some point, traditional media players are going to see their core revenue start to erode."

The online portion is still small, but growing. Research firm eMarketer found that of the $276 billion spent on US advertising last year, only $7.8 billion went to online ads-but that was a 15% increase over the prior year.

M&A v. IPO

As ad dollars begin to shift, online content players have been a hot area in the M&A market over the last year. Traditional media companies have scooped up properties as they begin to understand the true impact of advertising dollars moving online.

While investment bankers concede that the M&A activity prevents a certain number of content players from making their way to the public markets, that's not the whole picture, they insist. There simply isn't much to go by in valuing online content players for the public market.

At the moment, at least, investors can find more value in traditional media companies acquiring content players on a stand-alone basis, according to Peter Beckett, a managing director in the media, communications and technology group at Harris Bank. "As a result," he says, "we continue to see an aggressive M&A market as companies are willing to pay up for strategic opportunities."

What is more, this new generation of online companies--dubbed Web2.0 by some Silicon Valley players--are constructed differently from their forebears, making them less likely to look for IPOs. "These companies are not typically capital-intensive, so you're not seeing the same large-scale upfront investments required the way you did in Internet version 1.0," notes Merrill's Schultz.

And while there's some hope that the IPO window will finally open for this new industry in 2006, many investment bankers believe the situation won't change significantly until 2007.

Meanwhile, the valuations for online content companies remain strong in M&A deals and are comparable to, if not more favorable than, those in an IPO exit, notes Steve Bird, general partner at Focus Ventures, a Palo Alto-based venture capital shop. "It's not such a bad deal," he says of the M&A activity. "If you get a price that is as high or higher than the IPO, and you get cashed out immediately, that has a big impact on our rate of return." "

Texas Venture Capital Web 2.0 Blog » Blog Archive » Blogging business raises $12MM on $100MM pre-money:
"The 800 pound gorilla in the hosted blog business, Six Apart (I used their TypePad product for MSR), raised $12MM in their Series C financing. Om Malik suspects that the pre-money climbed north of $100MM. The investors have not been disclosed, but Om suspects that one of them might be Intel. Six Apart is being called THE core Web 2.0 infrastructure player. Possible exit? Om suggest that News Corp would be the best suitor. IDD has a good article on who to sell yourself to found here. "

memeorandum:
"The Web is humming with discussions on politics and current affairs. memeorandum is page A1 for these conversations. Auto-updated every 5 minutes, it uncovers the most relevant items from thousands of news sites and weblogs."

TailRank - About Us:
"What's TailRank?

TailRank is a memetracker which finds the coolest posts from thousands of blogs so you don't have to!
How does it work?

TailRank takes into consideration linking behavior, the text off the post, links in common with other users, search relevance, and various other factors for recommendations.
How does your ranking algorithm work?

TailRank spiders thousands of weblogs trying to find highly linked and discussed links and citations. We then store these in our index. Once TailRank discovers something important it promotes it to the main website.
How many weblogs does TailRank monitor?

Right now (Feb 7, 2006) we monitor 50k blogs. We're trying to push towards 70k blogs here shortly.
Is there a mobile version of TailRank?

Yup (and it's super cool)! Just visit mobile.tailrank.com.
Can I subscribe to an RSS feed for TailRank?

Yup. All our pages have RSS feeds including the home page, search, tagged posts, etc..."

WSJ.com - News Corp. Goal: Make MySpace Safer for Teens:
"When News Corp. bought the social-networking Web site MySpace.com last July, the media company got two surprises, one good and one bad.

The good part: The site, where teens and twenty-somethings post pages about themselves and communicate with friends, already was popular, but it suddenly took off. In the last six months of 2005, MySpace's monthly traffic nearly doubled to 36 million users, making it the eighth-most-visited Web site in January, according to comScore Media Metrix. News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch declared it the centerpiece of his new Internet strategy of attracting a large audience in a bid to bypass portals such as Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN in advertising revenue.

The bad part: MySpace has become the focus of criticism from authorities, teachers and parents that children are exposed to risqu� content and are preyed upon by sexual predators who meet them on the site. Such episodes aren't unique to MySpace, but the site stands out because of its size -- 54 million registered users, with about 19% of monthly users under 17, according to comScore..."

Study ranks behavioral ads ahead of YPN but behind AdSense - JenSense.com:
"Outsell released a new study 'Annual Ad Spending Study: Where & Why Advertisers Are Moving Online' which includes advertiser data on not only Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher Network contextual advertising, but also behavioral ads - advertising which has been getting a great deal of buzz the last few months.

Advertisers rated the effectiveness of contextual and behavioral advertising, and the results - and reach - were surprising. Advertisers were using the following methods of contextual & behavoral advertising:

Google 45%
Yahoo! 43%
Other 45%
Behavorial Ads 44%

But when asked to rate if the ads were 'Extremely/Somewhat Effective' the results were as follows:

Google 46.8%
Yahoo! 40.1%
Other 34.4%
Behavioral Ads 44.2%..."

The Impact of Emerging Technologies: A Shopping Phone - Technology Review:
"Toshiba mobile-phone software will offer online reviews of products by using bar codes.

Checking out the Internet buzz about a DVD, book or candy while on the go will become as easy as taking a snapshot of the bar code on the product.

Toshiba Corp., a Japanese electronics company that makes DVD players, laptops and nuclear power plants, has developed mobile-phone technology that searches for product reviews on up to 100 Web journals, or blogs, in 10 seconds.

Just use the phone's digital camera to snap a photo of the bar code of a product you're thinking about buying.

The technology can decipher if the blog chatter is positive or negative and tallies the count to show if a product is getting rave reviews or being trashed by consumers. That's useful if you're in a store about to buy an item..."

Google's ad sales tested in court | CNET News.com:
"Another lawsuit is poised to challenge Google's lucrative advertising-based business model by arguing it encourages unlawful use of trademarks as keywords.

The parent company of a payday loan provider called Check 'n Go has sued Google in federal court in Ohio, saying that the search engine permits other payday lenders to purchase ads that appear when the trademarked phrase 'check n go' is typed in..."

Sifry's Alerts: State of the Blogosphere, February 2006 Part 1: On Blogosphere Growth:
"...The blogosphere is over 60 times bigger than it was only 3 years ago...."

Sifry's Alerts: State of the Blogosphere, February 2006 Part 2: Beyond Search:
"In Part 1 of the State of the Blogosphere report, I covered the overall growth of the blogosphere. Today I'm going to cover the growth of the blogosphere as media, and discuss some of the emerging trends that deal with handling information overload. In a world of over 50,000 postings per hour, and over 70,000 new weblogs created each day, keeping on top of and in tune with the most interesting and influential people and topics is the new frontier beyond search. I've also got some surprises for you at the end of this post, two new features that I hope you'll find useful. But first, let's get our hands dirty in the data!..."

Microsoft Acquires Mobile Search Technology Provider MotionBridge: :
"Deal enhances Windows Live services with innovative search solutions for mobile operators and their customers spanning work and play..."

About Us:
"Gravee: Our Vision - Community Powered Search

We know what you're thinking: "Another search engine?!?"

But Gravee is much more than just another search engine or social bookmarking service.

Search engines have become the de facto content distribution channel for the Internet. Yet, unlike any other distribution industry (offline or online), many search engines do not view their suppliers (i.e. content owners) as true partners, nor do they view their search users (i.e. content consumers) as customers. Instead, this arms length relationship between many search engines and their communities has created angst for content owners as to how to best reach their consumers, as well as for how consumers can best provide feedback back to the original creators of that content. This disconnect between content producers and the consumers of that content prevents the creation of a virtuous cycle of feedback, which ultimately prevents all of us from creating and enjoying better and more valuable content on the Web.

Our mission is to:

* Treat content creators as true partners in the search and distribution process
* Treat content consumers and search users as valued customers
* Create an equitable and transparent distribution channel for content owners
* Create a more responsive and transparent feedback mechanism for content creators and their consumers
* Enable a "virtuous cycle" of content creation and consumption on the Web that connects content owners more directly to their consumers

How We Are Different

Gravee is different in two very important ways: our business model and our algorithm. And, those differences are focused squarely on how we can better serve our community of users.

And, there are two halves to that community we're talking about: 1) the content creators and Web site owners, who are creating most of the value in the search advertising equation; and 2) our search users, who find, bookmark, tag, and vote on that content through our search engine.


A Different Business Model

Keyword search advertising has grown to become an $8+ billion industry. And, while the underlying asset being monetized by search advertising is the content in the index (a.k.a. natural search results), the Web site owners who allow search engines to index that content still aren't sharing in any of that value that's created - until now. That's why we created the AdShare program - a more fair and equitable model for search and content distribution on the Web that compensates Web site owners, content creators, and online businesses that appear in search results alongside paid ads.

The Gravee AdShare program fundamentally changes the economic model for search advertising. Instead of search engines reaping all the profit from advertising (which is made possible in the first place by the existence of natural search results), Gravee shares up to 70% of all ad revenue with natural search results that appear on the same page when an ad click occurs, as well as with the Web sites that send users to Gravee who then clicked on ads.

In short, we believe that the value (read: money) created in search advertising must flow in all directions. Not just to us (i.e. the search engine), but also to the content owners appearing in natural search results who are helping to create that value in the first place, as well as our partners and affiliates that send traffic to our search engine by putting a Gravee search box on their sites.


A Different Search Algorithm

Many search engines would have you believe that their algorithms yield the best and most relevant results. However, if you compare each of their search results, they are sometimes drastically different. How could this be? How could each one of them be the best (or the most relevant)? If each claims to have the best algorithm, wouldn't they eventually come to the same conclusion? Or, at least come close?

There is a blind spot in many of today's search algorithms. They are based on an a priori model of the world, which assumes that certain known variables correlate highly with intangible values consistently and perpetually. For example, many search engines assume links to a particular page or site are the ultimate arbitrators of relevancy. This works sometimes, but not all the time. As a result, some of today's search engines are great at evaluating major, past events that have already reverberated throughout the Web, but not so good at evaluating relevancy of the actual content (or any Web site, really) if it is relatively new, or lacks a high concentration of links pointing to it (or other "historical" measures). Simply put, many of today's search engines overvalue the past while undervaluing the future, and the contributions of user input into the relevance equation.

Algorithms alone are unable to predict the relevancy of new content the way that people can.

Gravee is different. Our TagScore system takes inputs from humans and machines (including other search engines), rather than solely from only one closed, proprietary algorithm for determining the relevancy of a particular search result. An algorithm like Gravee's TagScore system, that takes inputs from humans as well as machines, can better keep up with the lightning speed at which content is being generated on the Web today. A more collaborative, contributory, and open approach can better serve the needs of both searchers and content owners alike..."

ResearchBuzz: Kosmix Search Engine Has Three Categories of Search Available:
"I do not like reviewing search engines on the basis of them being "the next Google killer" or whatever. I do like reviewing them on the basis of them doing interesting and useful stuff. And it's in that spirit that I appreciate Kosmix (http://www.kosmix.com/.)

Kosmix is a search engine that clusters results not by topic, but by type of page -- for example blogs, message boards, expert information, etc. At the moment three types of searches are available -- health, travel, and politics. The front page is a plain setup with tabs for the different types of searches.

You may do a direct search or you can explore. I started by exploring for the topic autism. I got the top three results in several different categories of information, starting with "Basic Information" and going through message boards, medical organizations, alternative medicine, etc. I backed up and instead of exploring the topic I did a regular search. In this case you'll see that the topics are on the left side of the page in a list, which I find a lot easier to navigate. And the data types into which they're divided make it easy to quickly go to a certain "flavor" of information. (Like, for example, a list of diabetes-oriented blogs.

Search results do include a cache, which is nice, but don't include information like page size or indexing date, which I miss.

I tried some searches on the other search tabs. The politics search, which is in alpha (the health search is in beta, the travel search is also in alpha) is a bit disappointing because the information is divided up into conservative, liberal, and libertarian, and that's it. No matter what search I tried, I only got those three groups. (Well, not quite always; I did a search for skateboarding and got only three results, which were all in the "conservative" bucket. Heh.) How about divisions for international politics? The travel search was better; there were divisions here including museums, travel guides, travelogues, etc.

Information on submitting your site to Kosmix and its crawler are at http://www.kosmix.com/submit.html. There is a page for "Kosmix Labs" at http://www.kosmix.com/kosmix_labs.html, but it's blank at the moment. Stay tuned.... "

Local Search to Grow from $3B to $13B by 2010:
"ClickZ reports that Local Search to Hit $13B by 2010. Online local search, including Internet Yellow Pages, local search and wireless, brought in $3.4 billion this past year. According to a forecast by the Kelsey Group, by 2010, it should reach 'nearly $13 billion.' The Yellow Page advertising is expected to only grow 1.5% over the same time period, reaching $28.4 billion by 2010. More details at ClickZ."

AOL #1 Converting site...MSN follows closely at #2:
"Where are the big G and Yahoo? In a press release that is bound to start some good discussions, WebSideStory details a January Study that ranks AOL #1 in the hearts of its Business to Consumer clients, with a nice (actually almost incredible) 6.17 Conversion rate."

Lycos Looking Forward, an Interview with COO Brian Kalinowski:
"...The firm’s focus is shifting towards “… consumer created and specialty niche content”. This means Lycos plans to support independent creators and publishers by building products, services and platforms that allow them to make professional content and distribute it through social-based search applications.

“Search is an absolute, necessary vehicle,” said Kalinowski, “Web2.0 search is the primary vehicle for navigation and discovery. Lycos is not the general purpose [search] destination of choice but it will always offer competitive commercial search and specialty search for niche content.”

... “Our primary focus is rolling them into 7 or 8 key properties.” He went on to identify key areas as; news, entertainment, games, content, email, blogging, photo albums and multi-media / social networking products.

A glance at the Lycos Network Help page shows they already have many of the technologies in place. Anglefire and Tripod are services geared to helping beginning bloggers or website builders create web-ready properties ready to accept fresh content. Much of that content can be stored, shared and gathered using Planet, a youth-focused social network platform introduced by Lycos. New webmasters can register domains through Lycos and receive HTML tutorials, manuals and gadgets through the WebMonkey and HTMLGear services. Wired Magazine is considered to be among the most credible sources of Internet and technology news.

That collection of assets gives the management structure at Lycos a wide resource base to work with as it reinvents and reasserts itself in relation to its much larger competitors, Yahoo, Google and MSN.

For Lycos, reinvention is, “… the opportunity to go from a large public to a small private company.” While admitting Lycos is, “… never going to beat Google,” at pure search, Kalinowski says Lycos will focus on areas, “where we can make a big dent.”

The area Kalinowski identified as Lycos’ primary target is niche content created by independent producers. Lycos wants to become a, “… destination for not only consumers but for producers and creators where they can market and promote the goods they create.” He noted there are several independent producers of films, music, video games, and written products.

...

Lycos sees a great deal of potential serving long-tail searches in order to aggregate content that appeals to small markets that control niches in the larger marketplace. The idea is that fresh content will draw viewers, “… creating a larger audience of varied, eclectic tastes.” Lycos plans to be a big player in a lot of smaller markets.

“We see and use search as a discovery engine,” Kalinowski said. “It will evolve in a few years to personalized content based on user interests and desires. Google needs to stay on the cutting edge of general search, sort of a one-trick-pony. We see many niches so if one falls off…”

If anything, Lycos is a survivor. When asked how search engine marketers should think about Lycos, Kalinowski replied, “As the sleeping giant. We will never come back and be the $100 billion company. We’re aiming at capturing a lot of smaller niche markets, satisfying needs that Yahoo and Google can’t because that requires focus outside of their capabilities.” Lycos intends to, “… take a significant position for indy content creators and content outside the realm of mainstream publishers. This is a very dedicated commitment for us.”

As the search sphere segments, it will be interesting to watch Lycos’ continued evolution."

Official Google Blog: Here comes Measure Map:
Google buys Measure Map:
"...Measure Map. Our goal has been to use the power of web analytics to help bloggers feel that same sense of connection with their audience. Today, as the Measure Map team joins Google, our mission remains the same: to build the best possible user experience so people can understand and appreciate the effect their blogs - their words and ideas - can have.

I have to admit I'm addicted now. I bet I check my stats a half-dozen times a day, anxious to see if anyone has linked to me or see what posts are most popular today. Our users agree -- whether their audience is just friends and family or thousands of readers -- they're having more and more fun with their blogs and investing more time in them. And that means content across the web is getting better.

Bringing Measure Map to Google is an exciting validation of the user experience work I've been doing with my partners at Adaptive Path for years. By opening up the app to more bloggers through Google, we hope to help even more people become passionate about their blogs..."

ongoing · The Real AJAX Upside:
"People like it because it’s snappy and responsive and lets you do nifty interactive stuff in the browser. But AJAX may be a big enough network-engineering win that the UI sparkle starts to look like a fringe benefit. Herewith some illustrations by example and a snicker at history.

As I wrote recently, I made some updates around the picture rotation here at ongoing, and I’m kind of fanatical about performance. Thus, this little meditation.

Servers are Busy · A really good way to achieve high performance in a web server is to not look at the data you’re sending out; just fetch files off the disk (or if you really must, fields out of a database) and pump ’em down the wire as-is. This allows you to use, almost entirely, the highly-optimized code paths in your filesystem and database and webserver. As soon as the server starts doing dynamic data parsing and mingling at request time, that’s a potential performance bottleneck, which can cause a world of pain when you get that real big traffic surge. ¶

A server’s compute resources are usually at a premium, because it’s, you know, serving lots of different client computers out there. Lots of different computers, you say; and how busy are they? Not very; your average Personal Computer usually enjoys over 90% idle time..."

Proposed law targets tech-China cooperation | CNET News.com:
"Nearly every U.S. company with a Web site located in China will have to move it elsewhere or its executives would face prison terms of up to a year, according to proposed legislation expected to be introduced this week in the U.S. Congress..."

Capitol Hill's fury on China | CNET News.com:
"By CNET News.com Staff - Last modified:February 16, 2006, 4:00 AM PST
House members condemn Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and other tech companies for kowtowing to Beijing..."

TechCrunch » Microsoft Office Live goes into Beta:
"Microsoft Office Live went into beta today. The service was first revealed at a Microsoft event last fall - you can see my post about it here.

This is not an online version of Microsoft Office. It is a set of online tools for businesses to help them have a web and email presence at a very low cost (starting at free with ad support). The core tools are a free non-microsoft domain name, website and up to 50 email accounts with 2 GB of storage each.

For a small company needing a informational website, it will be great. Given that the domain name, website building, hosting and email will all be free, this will be very attractive to a small business.

For customers needing more, Microsoft will offer a suite of additional productivity applications - 22 in all were announced last fall. They will also support third party applications - ADP’s payroll software was shown integrated into Office Live. A set of APIs will be available for third parties to add their application functionality into Office Live.

Among the additional applications is an office document collaboration tool. You can share an office document real time with others, allowing them to view and edit it. Impressive.

Office Live should become a starting point for small businesses wanting a web presence and a general platform to run their business operations.

If you are interested in participating in the beta, sign up at the main Office Live site. It is currently only open to U.S. businesses - the full service will launch later this year."