Posted June 30th, 2008
by admin
Yahoo is known for its (in)famous reorganizations, but they now face a contender for the title of “Most Likely to Shake Things Up.” Just over a year after its last reorganization, MIVA has headed back to the drawing board in the hopes of revising the struggling digital ad company.
On the chopping block is 15% of its workforce as well as the MIVA Media operations in Italy. MIVA says this will save them $4 million a year plus a one time savings of $1.4 million.
The recent reorganizations are just the latest of what ails MIVA. In 2006, Craig Pisaris-Henderson and Phillip Thune resigned as CEO and President respectively. And in 2005, the company agreed to an $8 million patent settlement with Yahoo.
As a result, MIVA dropped their partnership with Yahoo and made one with Google. Boy, that sounds familiar.
MIVA licensed FAST technology in 2005. FAST was recently acquired by Microsoft. Since MIVA has such an admiration for the way Yahoo does things, we offer the following words of advice: If Ballmer offers to buy, say YES.
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Posted June 30th, 2008
by admin
One could liken Google to a house that keeps expanding, with new room additions every few months. Google’s house is already the largest on the block and it seems to keep getting bigger. Two related moves represent further expansion. The first is the announcement last week of the Google Media Server, which conveys content from PC to TV. The second is a move to distribute original “TV” content online via AdSense.
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Posted June 30th, 2008
by admin
I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable that the Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool no longer takes you to the tool, instead it redirects you to the Yahoo Search Marketing landing page. I emailed Yahoo for a statement, and they have confirmed that they have decommissioned the tool.
There are tools you can use within the Yahoo Search Marketing console that you can use instead, but it requires that you login. The Overture tool has been plagued with issues for a long time. Overture’s tool, to me, is a historic SEM tool that will forever be remembered amongst SEMs - it is a bit sad to me to see it go. There are many good alternatives, many much better then the Overture tool, for more see our Search Marketing: Search Term Research category.
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Posted June 30th, 2008
by admin
Search ads trigger trademark lawsuit from rival from News.com reports on another search ad trademark lawsuit. This one differs in that the plaintiff is not suing a search engine, but rather suing his competitor.
NameSafe sued LifeLock for allegedly allowing one of their resellers to show search ads with NameSafe’s trademarks within the ad copy. The ads were triggered on a search for [namesafe], and the ads contained “Namesafe” in the title of the ad. Namesafe is not objecting to buying the keyword [namesafe] but rather using the trademark in the ad text.
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Posted June 30th, 2008
by admin
Matt Cutts is addressing the ever-present topic of spam again, only this time it’s on the Official Google Blog. Cutts wrote about coming across spam links in the search results. He says this doesn’t happen nearly as often as it used to, thanks to Google’s anti-spam metrics.
One of those metrics is data from search logs. Many have worried what Google does with the data collects, and Cutts assures that data such as IP and cookie information is used to help improve the search results.
“The IP and cookie information is important for helping us apply this method only to searches that are from legitimate users as opposed to those that were generated by bots and other false searches. For example, if a bot sends the same queries to Google over and over again, those queries should really be discarded before we measure how much spam our users see. All of this–log data, IP addresses, and cookie information–makes your search results cleaner and more relevant.”
But Cutts is also aware that the war against spam continues on:
“If you think webspam is a solved problem, think again. Last year Google faced a rash of webspam on Chinese domains in our index. Some spammers were purchasing large amounts of cheap .cn domains and stuffing them with misspellings and porn phrases. Savvy users may remember reading a few blogs about it, but most regular users never even noticed. The reason that a typical searcher didn’t notice the odd results is that Google identified the .cn spam and responded with a fast-tracked engineering project to counteract that type of spam attack. Without our logs data to help identify the speed and scope of the problem, many more Google users might have been affected by this attack.”
Another unsolved webspam problem - that was not addressed by Cutts - is letting humans in on the reporting of spam. Over at Blogspot, supporters of Presidential candidate Barack Obama have reportedly been flagging anti-obama blogs as “spam.” As a result, several of the blogs, including ones created by Hilary Clinton supporters, have been frozen.
Of course, this problem is experienced in the ‘paid links debate’ as well. Google accepts anonymous reports about paid links, which is an easy way for competitors to attempt to flag each other out of the results.
What do you think of Cutts comments? Do they reduce your fears about Google’s data collection? Should Google let third parties flag sites? Let us know in the comments.
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Posted June 30th, 2008
by admin
AOL has announced that its online advertising solution, Platform-A, will offer a guaranteed CPM to third party developers creating Bebo and Facebook applications. But the guarantee comes with a catch: it’s only good for the first three impressions for each unique U.S. visitor who visits an approved developer’s application.
Boasting one of the highest CPMs in the industry, AOL says the offer is part of WIDGNET™ publisher network launched earlier this year by Platform-A’s Advertising.com. WIDGNET brings advertisers and third party developers of widgets and social networking applications together.
“This announcement reinforces Platform-A’s commitment to helping developers generate revenue and monetize their Bebo and Facebook applications in the rapidly evolving social networking space. Advertiser interest in social networks is rising at a steady rate, and Platform-A is making an unprecedented flat-fee commitment to help application developers generate revenue and guarantee monetization of their applications,” said Dave Jacobs, Senior Vice President of Publisher Services, Platform-A Advertising.com Networks. “Platform-A views social networking applications as an area where we can add significant value by letting developers focus on expanding their install base, without worrying about monetization of applications.”
Earlier this year, AOL acquired Bebo for $850 million.
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Posted June 30th, 2008
by admin
Google’s Matt Cutts has recently provided some advice on SEO and explained how Google combats spam.
Matt recently was interviewed by Jefferson Graham of USA Today. The article was named Google’s Cutts: Good directions drive traffic to your website. The article covers five topics of SEO including keyword phrases, title tags, links, blogs and Google Webmaster Tools. Part of that, you can see a video of the interview, which spotlights Matt wearing the “We ♥ Webmasters” t-shirt.
Over the weekend, Matt posted a blog post at the Google Blog that goes through some of the techniques Google uses to fight search spam. The techniques include using data to fine tune their algorithms in combating this spam, as well as detecting it early and removing any spam that gets into the index.
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Posted June 30th, 2008
by admin
On-demand search provider, SLI Systems has upgraded Learning Search, a hosted site search solution. The update will include:
- Faster generation of results. Search queries will return results up to 50% faster.
- Redesigned merchandising console. SLI says the new design will help customers more easily change the order of search results, create banner ads, and customize landing pages.
- Auto Complete. This is a new feature which provides search suggestions.
Shaun Ryan, CEO of SLI Systems had this to say about the announcement:
“We’re always looking for new ways to improve our search solutions, and to give our customers more flexibility in how they can maximize the functionality of our offerings. The newest enhancements help everyone, regardless of their technical ability, to make decisions about merchandising, and make changes themselves — without having to rely on their IT departments.”
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Posted June 30th, 2008
by admin
Yahoo has warned us of an up and coming Yahoo Search index update. Priyank Garg & Sharad Verma of Yahoo Search said, Yahoo will “be rolling out some changes to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms over the next few days, but expect the update will be completed soon.”
The last Yahoo update was just about a month ago and Yahoo typically conducts updates monthly. I have not seen any discussion on fluctuations at Yahoo Search within the forums yet. Yahoo does explain we may see “some ranking changes and page shuffling in the index” during this update.
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Posted June 30th, 2008
by admin
Google Maps has signed a five year agreement with Netherlands-based digital mapping company, Tele Atlas. Google will now have access to Tele Atlas’ content for over 200 countries for current and future projects, including Google Earth and mobile applications.
“Google’s innovation and leadership is undisputed, and we are proud to have the opportunity to be the map foundation for one of the world’s most progressive web companies,” said Bill Henry, CEO of Tele Atlas. “This agreement is important too because it gives us access to input from a significant online community of map users, whose feedback can help us keep our maps fresh and accurate.”
“Geospatial data enhances global search significantly by organizing data and delivering results based on location,” said John Hanke, director of Google Earth and Google Maps. “Tele Atlas’ map quality and the company’s innovative approach to business were the key drivers for our decision.”
Related Reading:
Google Maps Adds Richer Data to Search
Google Launches Google Map Maker
Google Opens Location-Aware Application to 3rd Party Developers
Google Maps for Mobile Adds Public Transportation Directions
Google Launches Google Earth API and Browser Plug-in
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