AOL

December 5, 2007

SEO and Big Search

Okay, so now that lunch is over (I almost had food. It was exciting!) we're going to be hearing about how the search engines tackle SEO for their own sites. Moderator Joseph Morin jumps right in by introducing the panellists: Melanie Mitchell for AOL, Dave Roth for Yahoo! Inc, and Maile Ohye, for Google.

Melanie Mitchell is up first.

When you're talking about SEO it's not about the engine itself, it's how you manage it across the whole huge site. How do you optimize when the corporate culture and the site aren't aligned. You can't succeed without the support of the corporate culture particularly in the case of a large site?

How you do align the organization and how do you build a strategy that works? More importantly, it's about how you go about making a search marketing program work at a company without losing your mind.

AOL has over 100 million pages. It's an organizational and corporate challenge. You have to organize and track properly.

She brought the discipline a search marketing to the disorganization of the company. When she came to AOL in 2004, they were very disorganized. They weren't designed for search because they didn't have to be. They were a walled garden so they didn't have to think about search bots. They weren't set up to be search friendly, everything was disparate and in its own kingdom. So she had to come up with an SEO plan to change everything.

She got the CEO on board but the people who were supposed to impelement it just ignored it. She didn't allow them to ignore her however and when up the ladder to sell it to everyone. "Vive le roi". Roi in this case not being King but in fact ROI.

They had the information to show that the content available to succeed, they just didn't yet have the way to put the content out there in a way that would pull people in. [I have no idea what her slide means.] Their titles were poor, their linking wasn't good and their structure wouldn't support it.

They laid out the data in a way that showed the gaps between AOL and its competition in order to show why Yahoo was doing better than they were. They had to show that even thought they both had 10 results, it was about the quality of those results.

Here's the potential. Put it up front and sell the value. What is the revenue mix? What are the estimated page views and visits of the respective leaders in the space? How much would we make if we were as good as the leader?

That'll sell.

Once the brass bought it, she told them that they needed to back her up one this and make it clear that Search engine optimization was important to the company. Everyone in the company needed to understand that their part of the company had to work with the SEO plan. It needed to be in the company DNA, not just responsible of the "SEO Team".

AOL took SEO very seriously. They started rolling it out last year by putting it in the top 3 goals for the company. When people go out onto the web, they go to search, so AOL had to be there.

Where do you start?

Create core search team -- SMEs: these are the ones who are the experts on SEO. They keep up on the industry and keep everyone on course and up to par. Systems architects: Design the silos Tech lead: Translates for the engineers. Front Liners: SEO leads, silo leaders. Program Managers and Project Managers: Someone's got to keep the project on track. Program is the overseer, projects are the detail watchers.
Set priorities, goals and incentives -- Puts the teeth in your plan. Make things urgent or things will just slide by the wayside. AOL made search referals their metrics. Goal: 20-30 percent from search. They tied it into bonuses as incentives.
Train, Train, Train -- They created SEO certification. Take the test, pass the test, get certified. Fail the test, time to find a new job.
Set Internal Standards -- Know what is important SEO wise, set up best practices and define who is doing what.
Provide Tools -- People can't do their jobs without tools. Free tools if you need them. Internal wiki to share resources, keep a running FAQ.
Measure and Track (and adjust) - pages indexed (by percent), search referrals (is it growing month over month and by comparison to industry growth), User behavior (abandonment, return visits, page consumption)

Creating a dashboard--- search referrals, progress, how everything is going. Where are the weaknesses and strengths? Search referrals/overall visits, page views/visit

Final thoughts: You can't ignore search. You have to have executive buy in. If there is no accountability, there will be no success. Be transparent with your data. Be willing to do what it takes, even if it means being the Wicked Witch of the West instead of the Good Witch of the North.

Dave Roth comes up next to tell us all about Yahoo. His middle name is not Lee. Sad times.

He says that there's a new breed of exec out there. There weren't VPs of search and SEO and SEM at the big companies. It says a lot about the industry and its future.

Disclaimer: the numbers in the presentation are made up.

Search Marketing at Yahoo!
Why do they do it? They've been the biggest site for a long time. They do it the same reasons everyone else does. Traffic, revenue. It's the best way to get customers. They do SEO or SEM for just about every one of their properties. They do it among a number of business models -- subscription, ad supported, transactional...just about everything but straight e-tail. They use a lifetime value method. What the present value? What's the acceptable profit margin? It's a little different for SEO, you need to make some assumptions but it still works pretty well.

If you can't attach value to it, you can't get it done.

Central groups provide training, standards, best practices, reporting. Other teams do well. They don't get special treatment from yahoo search (aw.) but they do get limited data. They use tools like Yahoo! Buzz. And they work with YSearch for internal tools to try to make tools to better spider.

Quantifying Opportunity -- Their team says "If you can't quantify it, it doesn't exist."

Establish predictive models for SEO traffic. The goal is to get the executives to say yes.
Built virtual SEO 'clickspace' for properties.
Compare 'virtual' performance against SEO competitors.
Identify gaps - Find out who is beating you where.
Attach value - use life time value to get to the 'Show me the money' space.
Rinse and Repeat.

Infusing SEO into the Process -- Phase one Concept: competitor research, strategies for attracting traffic and links, partner and affiliate SEO possibilities
Phase two Wireframes: site architecture considerations, URL structure internal linking structure planning, SEMantic setup and benchmarking
Phase three Design: Wording& Use of keywords, AJAX Flash and CSS, contention distribution and layout
Etc

Each stage of product development has its own steps so that any team working at any stage knows what they have to do in order to serve SEO functions.

Organizing around SEO -- SEO program manager  SEO product development manager  SEO property managers  SEO producers (keeps an eye on what's published) and SEO analysts (keeps an eye on the value).

Measuring Success -- they use an SEO scorecard internally to track how successful they are. They built an index based on the same methodology as the predictive model and track it over time. They refine it as necessary.

Again, there is an executive dashboard that gives at a glance data so that you can see things in an easily consumed way.

They're doing basic SEO on a very large scale.

Quantify it and value it. Train everyone, hold people accountable. Attach it to people's personal revenue -- bonus or salary or pay. Infuse SEO into the development process.

Maile Ohye is up next for Google. She's a support engineer for webmaster central. Aw, she's all like speech class practiced. And she's....not talking about SEO at Google. She's totally off topic. Hrm, I'll take notes but just be warned that she's not going to actually say anything particularly helpful.

SEO how not to's: Common mistakes [the following is a pitch for Webmaster Central. If you read this blog and aren't using it, hi, welcome to the internet.]

Translate content without modifying site structure to international sites:
--using IP delivery can lead to German content getting shown on an English site.
Using the same URL to serving Googlebot different content from users = cloaking and that's against their guidelines.

Search ranking can be influenced by information relating to URL's language and location.

Users/browsers have language preference to respect. Just because someone lives in Germany doesn't mean they don't want English content.

When designing for IP delivery, keep the content largely the same. Make the dynamic portion small. If the change is substantial, create a separate URL.

Webmaster Tools just came out with a geolocation tool. You can use that.

[This is so not at all what this session is supposed to be about. Just FYI, Google, if you want to hit these points, awesome. Do it some place appropriate next time, please.]

Flash/AJAX are pretty but not properly crawled. (See previous session notes regarding designing with Flash.)

Opportunities in video/book/local/etc -- submit your content at Webmaster Central to all the verticals.

They're using video to reach people (this is almost on topic!). Matt's videos are a viral way to reach out to users and webmasters.

Fundamental SEO truths -- They design for accessibility and speed and easy navigation.
She shows the 'what if Google actually did SEO on their site' presentation. And yeah, not pretty.

For Google, their SEO is delivering great service. [Their other SEO strategy? HAVING 60 PERCENT MARKET SHARE. No wonder they don't have an SEO person. It's good to be the king.]

Posted by Susan Esparza on 12/ 5/07 at 2:43 PM | Comments (1)
See more entries in AOL, Branding, Design, Google, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engines, Yahoo, pubcon07

August 13, 2007

The Search Engines Privacy Challenge

CNET has declared Ask.com the engine most concerned about user privacy. Hmm, I don’t doubt that Ask is concerned about my privacy, but how can we declare them the “winner” when we haven’t even seen the privacy policies we’re judging them on? I mean, they haven’t even been released yet. It seems odd to me.

Backing up a bit, CNET recently sent out an eight question questionnaire to representatives of the five major engines (that would be AOL, Ask.com, Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft, for those just joining us) asking them what kind of information their engine collects, how long they hold on to it, whether they engage in behavioral targeting, if they allow users to opt out, and other things searchers should know before they go handing over sensitive data.

After all the results were tallied, CNET declared Ask the best engine when it came to privacy, based pretty heavily on the merits of AskEraser. AskEraser being the feature that’s not released yet and for which no release date has even be set. Yeah, that one.

Actually, last I heard, Ask wasn’t even sure how exactly they were going to make AskEraser possible. Does just having an idea about how search privacy should be make you the winner? That’s sad.

Whether or not you buy the final ruling (I don’t), the article did provide one good takeaway for users: It very simply broke down and illustrated the different engine-specific privacy policies for users to take note of.

Here’s what you should remember about each of the engines:

Ask.com: Once AskEraser goes live (whenever that may be), search data will be deleted in real-time. Ask does not link your data to the ads they’re displaying

AOL: AOL retains search data for 13 months before deleting it. No, they don’t link user info to ads, but they do toy with behavioral targeting. Users are given the opportunity to opt out.

Google: Google retains search data for 18 months and then only partially anonymizes a user’s IP so that it is harder to trace back to them. Google does not participate in behavioral targeting, nor does it link user info when serving ads. Good Google.

Microsoft: Microsoft also retains user data for 18 months, but unlike Google, after 18 months the information is deleted, not just anonymized. Microsoft does utilize behavioral targeting (it also links user info to the ads being shown) and for some reason gives users no way to opt out of behavioral targeting on the MSN.com site. Users can, however, opt out of behavioral targeting on third-party sites.

Yahoo!: Yahoo! admits to holding on to your data for 13 months and then partially anonymizing it after that. They do use behavioral targeting and link user info to the ads being served, and no, they don’t give you a way to opt out of it.

Any of that surprising to you?

I’ll admit, I was a little surprised by the results. I didn’t realize that Yahoo! and Microsoft didn’t provide a way for users to opt out of behavioral targeting. Why are users even tolerating that kind of behavior? The number of advertisers using adCenter is probably pretty small (in comparison to the other PPC networks, anyway), but what about Panama? Shouldn’t this brand new ad system take into account that not everyone likes having their history used to “better” their search? You would think.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 08/13/07 at 3:57 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in AOL, Ask, Google, Microsoft, Search Engines, Yahoo

April 11, 2007

Meet the Search Ad Networks

Rebecca Lieb is moderating this afternoon’s Meet the Search Ad Networks session featuring Doug Stotland (Microsoft adCenter), Stewart Easterby (Yahoo), John Kannapell (AOL), James Speer (Ask.com) and Brian Schmidt (Google). Now that representatives from all the engines present and I have a tummy full of falafel (thanks for lunch, Tamar! [Thank you, Tamar! --Susan]), I say let’s go!

Up first is Stewart Easterby. Everyone say hi to Stewart.

Stewart gives us a quick Yahoo update and says that Panama was the worst kept code name in the entire world. Heh.

He notes that the buzz around Panama started about a year ago and assures the audience that Yahoo is on pace to successfully move all of its advertisers over to the new platform. Early feedback is very positive, with users really enjoying the geo-targeting features, shares of clicks forecasting (can see potential bids and positions), and the signup process.

Stewart talks about some recent brand advocate research. A brand advocate is a customer who really loves a specific brand, but I’m sure you could probably figure that out yourself. Anyway, Yahoo conducted a survey and found that 87 percent of brand advocates search several times a week or more, 75 percent regularly use social media, and 2 in 3 social media users are brand advocates and highly engaged. I’m not sure what that has to do with paid search, but okay! Stats are delicious.

Stewart leaves his stat talk to remind us that Reggie Davis was recently appointed to VP of Marketplace Quality. He says that Yahoo is 100 percent dedicated to ensuring quality across all of their listings. And for the first time Yahoo is revealing how many clicks they remove on a regular basis before advertisers are charged. The discount rate is 12-15 percent and that’s across the entire Yahoo network.

Up next for Yahoo are quality-based pricing, domain blocking capabilities in 2007 and building on their new deal with Viacom which will help them deliver search and contextual advertising on Viacom’s 33 broadband sites. Cool.

Up next is Doug Stotland to give us our adCenter update.

Doug makes a very important and impressive announcement: Yesterday, Microsoft adCenter finished first in a head to head competition with Google and Yahoo…in a Rock 'Em Sock ‘Em death match. (I can confirm the validity of this statement; I’m proud to say I was there.) Doug hopes this will give advertisers some confidence in Microsoft. I think I love him.

We’re also reminded that since the last SES, adCenter has been live for 11 months. They’ve launched in the US, UK, and Canada and done over 5 releases. The feedback has been consistent:

Clicks are very good clicks -- The clicks people get from adCenter tend to convert higher in 4 of 5 categories, according to a recent study.
Not delivering enough clicks to advertisers – Microsoft is now running a Pilot Program to open up ads on the Microsoft Network.
Haven’t made it easy enough for advertisers to manage campaigns – If you want to play with new, not-yet-released adCenter features, you can visit http:/beta.adcenter.microsoft.com and toy around. Features include full text search, the ability to manage campaigns Costco-style, campaign import, favorites, and improved navigation and UI.

James Speer is next to talk about Ask Sponsored Listings.

The IAC Advertising Solutions was recently created to integrate all of their media and advertising solutions. It offers a one-stop-shop for media and search advertising throughout all of IAC’s properties.

James moves on to ASL and says its best feature is the standardization of its traffic. All of Ask’s publisher partners are actively monitored to ensure CPCs, conversion rates, and CPAs.

To ensure ASL advertisers get even distribution through the day, Ask calculates pacing factors which can be adjusted at the request of an advertiser. New campaigns are conservatively defaulted to a pacing factor of 50 percent. The lower the budget to spend ratio, the higher the pacing factor. The objective is to slowly move pacing up/down depending on search levels.

In Q2, 2007 Ask is introducing referrer blocking to the ASL console so that advertisers can decide where their ads are displayed. How does it work, you ask?

Advertisers review their click logs to determine whit sites are driving down campaign CPA metrics
Important data points include: date, keyword, clicks, conversions, and referrer
Log into your ASL account and add the refers to be blocked

Brian Schmidt is up next and he’s here to talk about vision. Sweet.

Google believes they’re in the connection business. They connect consumers with what they’re looking for and connect advertisers with the customers they’re looking for. They do this through the three-tiered Google platform:

Search Solutions
Content Network
Web Utilities & Other Programs

Google is working to give advertisers more control over their ad campaigns by launching tools like Google Web site Optimizer, pay per action ads (PPA) and CPC Site-Targeting.

Other things Google is working on:

Google Audio Ads: bringing efficiency, relevancy and accountability to radio advertising. Audio ads will be at scale, targeted, efficient, inclusive and measurable
Google Print Ads: Web-enabled marketplace for buyers and sellers of newspaper ads covering the top DMAs.

Next up is John Kannapell from AOL who says AOL’s Advertising Network is thriving.

AOL Search keeps users engaged, brings them back and enables high quality ad opportunities. (No, don’t laugh; he said that with a straight face). Their goal is to be accurate, more complete and more convenient.

AOL Search Marketplace allows advertisers to really focus their message to AOL users and give them more control. It also helps to increase ROI. What this does for AOL is bring an end to end solution. Users get:

AOL-branded version of relevant components of the Google AdWords system
Sponsored Links specifically on select AOL properties to select advertisers
AOL’s new system offers advertisers the best of breed functionality, features and reporting that is used in Google’s AdWords system for text-based ads.

AOL Search Trademark Layer is the most prominent placement on the AOL search page. It appears above both the sponsored links and Web search results. There are four clickable elements.

Next came Q&A with was by far the most amusing part of the sessions thanks to some quirky mics and Brian’s (Google) inability to hear anyone in the audience. Heh, good times, good times.

The best question was posed by Rebecca Lieb, who dared the networks to answer one important question: Why should we spend with your network? The engines went round-robin to answer.

Microsoft adCenter: Two reasons: These are the highest quality converting clicks and there are things you can learn and do on adCenter in terms of understanding your audience that you can take to apply to all your campaigns.

Yahoo: The reach of the network, the quality of traffic, ease of use of our interface and the quality of support.

AOL: Sends consistent message. Building a comprehensive solution to build your brand.

Ask: We can deliver incremental conversions for the same CPAs. It’s an incremental buy. We have lower spend points established. Take the heavy lifting off your plate.

Google: Reach, innovation and options, support and usability.

One advertiser asked the engines’ representatives how they can incorporate search ads in video.

Brian of Google responded that there are existing opportunities to use or leverage Google’s video marketplace. Obviously, Google believes that online video is a growing market, but they’re not sure about the right way to do it right now. They’ve been careful to put the user first and have been cautious not to damage the brand of YouTube.

I can’t help but think Googler’s answer questions far better than any other search engine rep. Maybe because they admit that they don’t know everything and that they’re okay with that. Googler’s are awesome.

And that’s it. Consider yourself updated on all the search marketing networks.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 04/11/07 at 12:17 PM | Comments (1)
See more entries in AOL, Ask, Branding, Google, Live Search, Pay Per Click, SEM Events, Search Engines, Yahoo, sesny07

September 26, 2006

AOL Joins Class-Action Club

AOL has been officially initiated into the class-action lawsuit club. Congrats, AOL!

TechCrunch broke the news that three AOL users have filed a class action lawsuit against AOL in California on Friday in response to last month's privacy breach. According to the filing (PDF), the suit seeks no less than $1000 in damages per user effected and $4,000 per effected California user. I guess that's the going rate for privacy these days, seems a little cheap to me (though this could be a $658,000,000+ bill for AOL).

There's a few very interesting things about this suit.

First, how will the courts determine what qualifies an "effected user"? Whose job will it be to identify all 658,000 affected users? To my knowledge, only one person has been identified by name. Will this suit require that everyone be identified by name and have their search history entered into evidence? If so, isn't that a bigger injustice? I will be very interested to see how this suit will go about identifying its class, and how many users will come creeping out of the woodwork claiming to have been victimized.

Making matters more complicated is that not everyone suffered the same privacy violation. Does just having your name mentioned in AOL's data make you privy to some of the settlement, or should only those who had credit card numbers or passwords revealed be made part of the suit? What happens to users who were victims of identify theft thanks to AOL's debacle (are there any)? Do they get more? Surely, some of the 658,000 users will be left unidentified. Are they just forgotten? I think user identification will be the hardest part of the plaintiff's case.

Second, in addition to cash payments, the suit also demands that AOL not be allow to retain search results for any amount of time, for any purpose. Though everyone would appreciate more transparency regarding how long AOL (and GYM) keeps this data and who has access to it, forbidding them from holding on to it for any amount of time seems somewhat extreme and potentially damaging to the AOL engine. There are good reasons for AOL to hold on to some user data, if only for users own safety.

I'm not too worried about this one. I don't think the United States government would ever embrace the idea of search engines NOT holding on to their data. It's too valuable, and I'm not talking about its value to AOL...

Third, it's only been a little more than a month since the AOL data was leaked. If users participate in this suit, what recourse will they have down the road should someone misuse their identity based on what was released? Should users worried about the long-term effects of his leak opt-out of this suit and leave themselves open for future suits? IF you're one of the users who had credit card numbers or other very personal information revealed, settling now for damage that may occur in the future seems like a risky venture.

The final point of interest for me comes from page seven of the filing itself [emphasis added]:

"As of the date of this complaint it is the understanding of plaintiffs and their counsel that AOL has not done anything to help the members whose personal sensitive and confidential records were released to the public by AOL. AOL members who sought assistance from AOL about the disclosure of the Member Search Data were not offered any assistance. AOL's only response, if any, was to offer the victimized member a free month of AOL service, a service which AOL is now offering for free."

While that's probably not 100 percent accurate (there were those ~~public beheadings~~ firings after all), did AOL seriously offer uses a free month of AOL as a way of making up for releasing all their search data? If so, that's completely insulting and arrogant.

This suit will definitely be one to watch. If the users named in this case are successful, it could lead to future trouble for Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 09/26/06 at 12:03 PM | TrackBack (0)
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September 5, 2006

Round-Up

Google Certified SEO?

Lee Odden pointed us to a WMW thread that shows Adam Lasnik is scheduled to hold an Optimizing Your Websites for Google Search seminar at Catholic University on Sept. 18th. Hmm, interesting.

The class breakdown is as follows:

Understanding search engines and search engine results (25 minutes)
Building crawlable, indexable, and well-ranked sites (45 minutes)
Tools, tricks and troubleshooting (35 minutes)
Break (10 minutes)
Webspam --what it is, how to avoid it, how to report it, etc. (10 minutes)
Live site evaluations (45 minutes)
Questions & Answers (45 minutes)

Better yet: The entrance fee for the event is a measly $30! Thirty bucks to get SEO secrets from MiniMatt and pick his brain about Google? Talk about a bargain. The only catch is it looks like you have to be a government employee to sign up.

Drat. I wonder if being engaged to one counts? Maybe I can get some secrets by association.

Google Faces Potential Fines in Brazil

On Friday, Google Brazil was given 15 days to turn over data on Orkut users (via SEW) who allegedly promote criminal activity, such as racism, violence, discrimination, pornography and child abuse. Failing to comply with the order will cost Google $23,000 a day. Please, Sergey spends $23,000 every day. On breakfast.

Surprisingly, Google Associate General Counsel Nicole Wong says Google has no qualms about handing over the requested information:

"What they're asking for is not billions of pages. In most cases, it's relatively discrete -- small and narrow."

So why haven't they done it yet?

Google Congratulates Emmy Winners

The Google Operating System blog lets us in on an odd piece of information:

"If you're in the US and search for one of the Emmy winners, like Julia Louis Dreyfus, Google has a nice little ad that says "Google congratulates". Here's the text of :

"We were rooting for you to strike gold at the Emmy Awards ceremony the other night, and we were thrilled when you did. As firm believers in accountability, Google salutes professionals like you who have accomplished great things."

Um, okay? The purpose of these weird congratulatory ads? Yeah, we don't know either, but I guess they're kind of fun. I wonder why Google has them show up in the Sponsored Ads section? That seems like an odd place to put something you want people to see.

AOL Research Closes

Greg Linden has the news that AOL has opted to close their research group in the wake of last month's privacy fiasco. Sad. It could have been a great tool for researchers to get information on how users search.

Blogging Is Like Sex

Are you awake now? Feisty Kim Krause attributes blogging to sex, explaining.

"Sometimes things are going just perfectly and it’s all you can think of and want to do. Other times, it’s this gigantic weight hanging over your head and you feel guilty if you can’t find time to do it."

It's true. Blogging comes with its very own set of performance pressures, imposed expectations, and occasional days where you just have to fake it. Go ahead, read her post, you know you want it. And don't worry, there aren't any embarrassing pictures.

[You can stop blushing now.]

Posted by Lisa Barone on 09/ 5/06 at 5:35 PM | TrackBack (0)
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August 21, 2006

The AOL Fallout Continues

Two weeks after AOL published private search log data from more than 600,000 users, the researcher responsible for the breach, as well as the researcher's supervisor and Chief Technology Officer Maureen Govern have been fired.

AOL Digital Services President John McKinley, who Govern replaced last year, will take over as interim CTO until a permanent replacement is found.

Wow.

Though the firing was a necessary step, it still came as a surprise and was somewhat hard to swallow. It's unusual to see someone as high up the ranks as Govern take a fall, but if AOL hopes to re-brand itself as a "consumer-focused Internet company", it's something that had to be done. It's vital that AOL acknowledge the screw-up and show users that what happened was not acceptable by any means, and that it won't happen again. Today's firing is an unfortunate, but important, first step in doing that.

In the hope of rebuilding users' trust, AOL has also promised to put together a task force to "develop new best practices on privacy" and to determine how long search and other data should be saved.

I'm glad to see AOL is stepping up and doing what needs to be done. Earning back the trust of its users will be an ongoing daily process that must take center stage from here on out.

Of course, simply playing musical chairs will not solve the problem at hand. This problem extends much further than Govern's desk and far beyond AOL. What happened at AOL could have easily happened at Google, Yahoo! or any of the other engines. Privacy concerns run industry-wide and will only be solved through increased transparency.

Up until this point, the search engines have been relatively silent about what information they store, who has access to it and how long they're holding it for. Two months ago when the engines were asked how long they kept search data, reps from Google and Yahoo! both responded "for as long as it is useful". I don't know about you, but that answer doesn't exactly squash my concerns. In fact, it heightens them.

Also scary: When AOL was asked the same question, they responded "roughly up to 30 days". The breach showed us that wasn't entirely truthful either.

Hopefully the breach has woken up complacent users who were far too willing to hand over all their personal information to the search engines in return for never having to enter in a password. Hopefully the idea that their personal information and supposed-secure queries are not so secret after all will force them to demand answers and hold the engines accountable.

If users care about their safety and privacy, the days of the engines picking and choosing what they tell us must come to an end. The engines need to take a more transparent stance with their privacy policies. Ideally, they should be working together to form one clear initiative. Searchers should know what information is being stored, they should have control over how the information is used, and there should be iron-clad system in place to prevent it from being misused by others. Anything else is both unacceptable and unsafe.

What happened at AOL was a gross reminder that the data the engines collect is saved and could therefore be leaked out to unscrupulous third parties.

Like I said before, good for AOL for taking the initial steps necessary to correct the problem, but now it's time for the other engines to follow suit, and for you as a user to demand that they do. You wouldn't let your family go to a doctor who refused to explain their privacy policy, so why would you agree to use an engine who won't explain theirs? You shouldn't.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 08/21/06 at 4:58 PM | TrackBack (0)
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Weekend Round-Up

What have you yodel'd or yahoo'd?

Yahoo! has sparked up an interesting advertising campaign asking users to submit their own "Yahoo! has changed" video. Unlike Google, they're encouraging users to use the Yahoo! brand name as a verb. While the still-cluttered Yahoo! homepage doesn't impress me much, these videos are great and will hopefully become a great viral marketing tool for Yahoo.

August 15, 2006

Round-Up

Here Comes the Flood

The fallout continues. When AOL published search lot data from more than 658,000 subscribers it did more than just violate the trust of its users. They opened up the privacy floodgates, reminding users of the sensitive data that they often unknowingly reveal when searching online. Now that the deed has been done, it can't be taken back.

In response, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has submitted an 11-page complaint to the US Federal Trade Commission asking them to investigate last week's release and to prohibit the company from storing search data for any longer than two weeks.

The EEF is calling the release a breach of AOL's stated privacy policy, and wants AOL to notify each user whose search data was disclosed, expedite service cancellation, and pay for at least one year of credit monitoring service for each affected individual, as well as other demands.

The silver lining to this whole disastrous situation may be that it's forcing Internet users to ask questions about what information is being stored, how long it's being stored for, and who has access to it.

There's good reason for search engines storing information, but users need to be reassured that there is no way their query can be traced back to them. Without that, the entire concept of the Internet falls flat, and simply creating "anonymous" user IDs the way AOL did clearly does not work.

Personally, I'd also like to be reassured the DOJ won't be able to force the engines into handing over this information just because they may find the information "helpful". This isn't Minority Report. As a user I want to know what my privacy protections are and where my information may end up.

Google Coupons? All right!

Google has partnered up with ValPak coupons (no, I'm serious. They did.) to let businesses upload printable online coupons to their Google Maps listings free of charge. Now a search for "dry cleaners in Los Angeles" will return listings for local dry cleaners, which may or may not feature online coupons. Users will be able to print the online coupon directly from Google Maps. Kinda cool, but kinda dorky.

Reportedly, Google also has plans to allow advertisers to link to their AdWords campaigns from their Google Maps coupon, so if you're a small local business without a Web site, now you may not need one.

If you want to create a coupon for yourself, er, I mean your business, head over to Google's Local Business Center.

Terry Semel: Yahoo! is the best-positioned company on the Internet

Did you happen to read Adam Lashinky's interview with Terry Semel over at CNN? If not, you should go read it. There are some real gems. I'll just pick out some of my favorite parts:

With the recent deal between Yahoo and eBay, the two companies have gotten very chummy. Why not go all the way and merge?

I think what we're doing right now is going to benefit both companies an awful lot.

An awful lot? Well, aw shucks!

Google's motto is "Don't be evil." What's Yahoo's?

[Long pause.] I don't know that we have a motto. Well, the mission of the company is, Deliver great value to our consumers and, basically, value them.

Yahoo! needs a motto. If I walked into work everyday and was asked the same question, at some point I would come up with an answer. How many times do you think Terry Semel has been questioned about Yahoo!'s motto? Ten? Twenty? More than that? It may be time to come up with an answer. Then at least people will stop asking. Just a suggestion.

From an investor's standpoint, what makes Yahoo a better bet than Google or other rivals?

We're not comparing ourselves to any one company, but as we look ahead in a connected world, just being really good at one thing may not be enough.

I'm glad that Yahoo has become really good at a number of things. We had a very significant financial growth story. As we improve our revenues per search and we financially maximize many of the things we've been doing, like Answers and Flickr, we won't be totally dependent on any one thing or any one market. Things change very quickly, and I think we're the company best positioned for change. Long term, I think Yahoo is the best-positioned company on the Internet.

Ooo, did you catch that? Terry Semel thinks Yahoo! is the best-positioned company on the Internet. Ballsy!

Blog Rank

Rand Fishkin is asking for trouble with his post Ranking 50 Top Blogs in the Search Sphere. In it, Rand breaks down the blogs he reads and ranks them into four different categories: The Mainstays, The Elite, The Niche Bloggers [represent!], and Outsiders. It's pretty much a Who's Who of search marketing blogging. People's feelings are surely going to get hurt. You know how sensitive those bloggers can be.

In response to Rand's list, Barry Schwartz compiled his own list of favorite search blogs. We like Barry's better than Rand's -- he ranked us higher. :) [We're huge fans of you too, Barry, especially the new blog.]

We recommend you check out both lists and take a look around. Where else can you find such a comprehensive list of Must Reads? Who knows, you may even find yourself a new second favorite blogger.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 08/15/06 at 4:48 PM | TrackBack (0)
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August 14, 2006

Getting Back in the Loop

After being out all last week, I'm still catching up on my feeds. Here are some stories that caught my eye.

From Bad to Can-it-Get-Any-Worse

Last Monday, Susan told you about AOL's unseemly privacy blunder, and in the past week things have gotten progressively worse. So far, searcher #4417749 has been identified as 62-year-old Thelma Arnold (Everyone, wave to Thelma. *waves*), Niniane Wang outed one man's embarrassing problem, several SEM tools have been created using the data, old bills have been given new life and Slate used the info to profile the seven ways people search the Web. (The Pornhound, The Manhunter, The Shopper, The Obsessive, The Omnivore, The Newbie and The Basket Case, in case you were wondering).

You feel pretty smart for never having used AOL, don't you?

Make way for Google Porn!

There's been multiple reports recently has Google has lax'd their uploading restrictions on Google Video. TechCrunch's Michael Arrington noted that Google removed the term "pornography" from the restrictions on uploading videos and has added a "Mature & Adult" content section.

Well, okay then. Maybe Google spent some time going through the released AOL data...

Web Analytics is Important

DMNews released a special report on Web Analytics this morning. The report includes articles written by experts from ClickTracks Analytics, WebTrends, Omniture and more, and focuses on topics such as best practices, why web analytics is important and details the four best tools to track and repair usability problems.

I haven't had a chance to read the full report yet, but I'll try and delver deeper in this one for you guys a little later.

How to Land the Nerd Job of Your Dreams

Loren Baker points to Guy Kawasaki's post on nailing that Valley job interview. Guy gives potential-interviewees some great hints on making a good first impression, including bringing a solid pitch with you, adapting the mantra of "plug and play", taking notes and answering the "how are you question" with a "great response."

That last one gets me, probably because Guy recommends answering with:

“I feel great. I’m really eager to learn more about this job and tell you about myself, so that we can determine if we’re a good match.”

For real? That's how you want to answer that question? I'm sorry, but if I innocently asked someone how they were and they got all big-eyed and told me FANTASTIC, I'd either laugh or run in the other direction (depending on if they had that crazed looked in their eye or not, of course). Sometimes a simple question merits a simple answer.

Matt is No Fool

Matt reminds readers not to take a picture as a sign of friendship. He's such a rock star.

And props to the girl wearing this Matt Cutts Makes Me Google shirt. It's awesome. As is the guy in the background who wants so much to be like Matt that he copied his facial hair (and shirt?). Can you blame him?

Bonus Goodie

SEO Hottie of the Month Rand Fishkin recounts why sumo wrestling on a full stomach is never a good idea. Aww, poor Rand -- so cute, but such a sensitive stomach.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 08/14/06 at 11:59 AM | TrackBack (0)
See more entries in AOL, Analytics, Google, SEM Events, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engines

August 7, 2006

Weekend Round-Up

Good Monday, everyone. Lisa is traveling today on her intrepid mission to bring you back reports on the very best of SES San Jose. Tune in all week for her updates on sessions, parties and more. I'm manning the desk back here at home so that the rest of the news doesn't slip through the cracks.

Okay, let's begin!

Google Wants Their MTV

The hippest thing of the new millennium and the hippest thing of the 1980s are together at last! Google and MTV struck up a deal to syndicate MTV content on the web. WSJ has the story. (Subscription required, sorry.)

Eric Schmidt sees it as exciting and revolutionary, "Our technology takes MTV's video, marries it to an ad, and shows it on a third site. No one's ever done this before. If this works, it would be a very large business for all players."

No word yet on whether or not this will resemble more the early years of MTV (you know, when they played music videos?) or the current iteration where the music is hard to find but the spoiled rich kids are plentiful.

AOL's Privacy Blunder

People have long feared all the information that search engines gather on their users. How will they use it? Who will they give it to? Exactly how much of it is directly tied back to a specific user?

Well, the answers from AOL are apparently 'however they like', 'everyone' and unfortunately, 'all of it.'

AOL released a data set of over 20m user queries sampled over 3 months from about 500k users. It was a great opportunity to mine their information for personalization, query refinement and many other search patterns. There was just one glitch--each of the users were identified by number which, based on their search history, made it very easy to track an ID number back to a particular user.

As Phillip explains:

Based on a sequence of searches it is often trivial to connect a person to a user ID. For example, user 500 may search for “link:mysite.com”, and then user 500 may search for the name “John Doe.” Now you can verify that mysite.com’s webmaster is John Doe from San Francisco, and you have a good indicator that user 500 is indeed John Doe. Finally, you look at other queries from this user – like, “jobs San Francisco” – and you have strong indicators that John Doe is looking for a job behind his current boss’s back.

Happily AOL realized the error of their ways and took down the information shortly after launch but not before Michael Arrington summed it up in the best way possible, "The utter stupidity of this is staggering."

AOL's official response? "This was a screw up, and we're angry and upset about it. It was an innocent enough attempt to reach out to the academic community with new research tools, but it was obviously not appropriately vetted, and if it had been, it would have been stopped in an instant."

Unfortunately, it's too late. The whole dataset is still available through mirror sites. Aren't you glad you don't use AOL?

Google Shares Data

Speaking of giving away search data to the research community, Google gave away some of their internal numbers over the weekend. Unlike AOL, they did it right; this data can't be tracked back to users. Thanks for the care, guys. Good to see that your 'don't be evil' guideline still seems to be firmly in place.

Google's research blog has the full scoop on what kind of information is being made available.

Matt News

What would a weekend update be without mention of Matt? Coming to us from the Cutts Cave (kinda like the Batcave but without the giant penny) are a plea for his buddies in the Googleplex to stop the madness and a new video on the best way to navigate through SES San Jose.

And with that this recap has come full circle. Have a great week, everybody.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 08/ 7/06 at 12:07 PM | TrackBack (0)
See more entries in AOL, Google, SEM Events, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engines, sessj2006

August 2, 2006

A Round-Up Of Sorts

Google signed a deal with XM Satellite Radio to insert ads on the radio company's non-music channels using its dMarc technology. The new ad system could be implemented as early as this year's fourth quarter, giving AdWords advertisers access to the more than 7 million XM subscribers.

Rumor Alert: MediaPost reported Google's plans for dMarc include its expansion onto TV. Hmm...

Ask.com & Bloglines released a new access: restricted tag that users can employ to keep Ask from indexing and including the information in the Ask.com or Bloglines blog search.

Ask also announced the addition of an ISBN number shortcut to its Smart Answers. Just type in the ISBN number (don't lie, we know you have all your favorites memorized!) and Ask will find the book, bring up a photo and direct you to a site where you can compare prices and buy it. It's a handy tool, though Yahoo! beat them to this one.

AOL announced its moving to a free model. I know, try to look shocked.

Matt Cutts uploaded two more videos. He is just all about the link bait lately.

USA Today profiled Danny Sullivan yesterday, talking about how he made the transition for working in the graphic design department of two prominent newspapers to his launch into this crazy thing called search engine optimization. If anyone deserves all this attention, it's Danny. In the article, Incisive Managing Director Rory Brown calls Danny a "rock star". A rock star, indeed!

Yahoo! launched their corporate blog, Yodel Anecdotal. Cute. I hope the blog turns out to be clearer and less... silly(?) than their initial definition of it:

"Think of this site as the front door to our home (work with me as I posit a questionable metaphor): In our kitchen, we’ll offer you a cup of coffee and direct you to the fridge door, where we’ve displayed the things we’re most proud of. We’ll demonstrate our latest inventions from the workbench in our garage, engage in healthy debates around the dining room table (pass the pepper, please), and sink into overstuffed chairs in the living room to share some of our favorite photos. We’ll point out the shower where we do our best thinking (apologies for the visual) and the den, where we goof around."

Um, yeah. Welcome home. Or something.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 08/ 2/06 at 5:48 PM | TrackBack (0)
See more entries in AOL, Ask, Branding, Google, Pay Per Click, Rumors, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engines, Yahoo

Does Google Pay Content Providers?

A recent Mercury News article caused quite a stir in the blogosphere Monday when it sort of, but not outright, accused search engines of paying newspaper sites for the right to index and link to their content. The article turned the popular notion that the search engines "steal" revenue away from newspapers upside down and showed the newspapers actually being financially rewarded by the engines.

Taken from the article:

"Recently completed deals, which include arrangements in which media organizations such as the Associated Press will be compensated on a pay-per-click basis, could herald a major shift in the relationship between the old media and new Internet gatekeepers.

"The people who own the content did a lot of work to generate the content,'' Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said in an interview with the Mercury News. ``We want them to get the majority of the revenue from advertising.''

It's unclear what exactly Eric Schmidt meant by that last statement, but it was enough to make bloggers stand up and take notice. Do the search engines pay content providers to use their articles? If so, how does this affect smaller newspaper sites and blogs who are also fighting for spots in Google News? I think the bigger question at hand was if Bob's Blog pays Google $x, can he too land himself in Google News?

Historically, content providers were never offered payment for "allowing" the search engines to link to their content, at least not in cash. When Yahoo! or AOL made a deal with a newspaper, the site's commission was in traffic, not direct deposit. AOL would provide a snippet of a New York Times article, and then link back to the original article on the NYT site. If the user wanted to read more, they had to follow the link back to the NYT. AOL got to use the story and the NYT got the traffic.

But the Mercury News article seemed to be painting a different picture, one that showed Google paying syndication fees. Google responded yesterday saying:

"Google has always believed that content providers and publishers should be fairly compensated for their work so they can continue producing high quality information. We are always working on new ways to help users find the information they are looking for, and our business agreement with the Associated Press is one example of that."

I still don't know what that means. Is Google working on a deal similar to the one Yahoo News has? Or is that an admission that Google currently runs a pay per click partnership with the AP for allowing them to crawl their content? It's still unclear, but the statement does indicate some sort of official business model regarding this is on its way, or at least being debated. I'd also like to know what "fairly compensated" means and just what kind of money we're talking about (pennies or billions?).

It seems important and I think users have a right to know if Google (and the other engines) has a deal with certain content providers. If companies can pay to have their content appear in Google News it could lead to a potential bias of what stories get covered and how, and I think it's only fair for users to know that ahead of time.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 08/ 2/06 at 10:10 AM | TrackBack (0)
See more entries in AOL, Google, Rumors, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engines, Yahoo

July 13, 2006

AOL's Next Step

It's do or die time for AOL. If they want to re-stake their claim in the market, the time has come to formulate a new strategy. Clearly, no one is interested in free AOL minutes.

There's been a lot of buzz lately that AOL may be considering offering its service free of charge to anyone with a high speed Internet connection. Sources say AOL hopes letting longtime users keep their beloved email addresses and other AOL-specific features will deter them from canceling their accounts and giving their traffic and revenue to competitors like Google and Yahoo!.

I'll be honest, when I first heard the news I thought to myself, "So AOL wants to be like Google?" And then I realized, AOL is supposed to be like Google. Though the only ones who rely on AOL search now are grandmothers and the totally un-hip, AOL's original focus was based around search. The media/ portal aspect came later. If they're going to survive in today's market, it's time for a reinvention.

The decision to bid their granny status farewell will be a risky one and will ultimately decide the fate of AOL. The Wall Street Journal estimates the new proposal could cut AOL's subscription profit in half over the next three years and sacrifice nearly $1 billion of its operating profit through 2009. Their market share has been steadily decreasing in recent years and will surely flop as things reorganize.

It sounds grim, but AOL hopes an increase in Internet ad revenue will offset any decline in subscription revenue and ultimately leave the company more profitable. The new ad-based strategy will hopefully allow AOL to generate more traffic and boost online advertising. Online advertising already accounts for 80 percent of AOL's total revenue, how much more are they hoping to increase it?

It's a bold move for AOL, but there's no point in sitting on your laurels trying to squeeze every last dime out of your current system while continuing your fate as an also-ran. They've been doing that for too long and they're not bringing in the amount of new subscribers they need to make the old way of doing things profitable. The rapid adoption of high speed Internet and free email services, like Hotmail and Gmail, have stolen AOL's market.

I believe AOL's success will be directly tied to whether Time Warner and stockholders are patient enough to give AOL the time it needs to rework itself.

I think there's still a place for AOL in today's market, assuming they can market themselves correctly. They have a following (be it, small) of very loyal users, people who have been AOL-loyal for more than a decade. I think they'll wait and see where AOL is going with all this before jumping ship.

And old members will be propositioned back with the promise they can reclaim their old AOL email addresses. Will nostalgia and free AOL be enough of an incentive to lure users back or have people truly moved on? That's what AOL is about to find out.

Ask Jeeves was able to re-brand itself into the smarter, faster Ask, so there's no reason AOL can't procure the same fate. But even with a fresh start, it will be difficult. Many have already written AOL off and getting them to change their minds will be an uphill battle.

But AOL does have some value. It must for Google to spend $1 billion in order to obtain a 5 percent stake in the dwindling company. The AOL brand is worth something.

Who knows, maybe Google will take AOL's slightly weakened state and try to acquire them. AOL is currently ranked as the third biggest portal behind Yahoo and Google. Google's search with AOL's media portal could be a perfect fit. Users could subscribe to GoAOLgle and find everything they could ever need in one Google-ized site.

But even if they decided to go it alone, there's a chance for AOL to re-brand itself into something that will excite users. They will likely never compete with Google in terms of pure search, but the AOL portal has the potential to surpass Yahoo!'s. A relevant search with a media portal users already trust? Isn't that what Google has been trying to secure? Believe it or not, I think AOL has a chance to get there first. And that's the power this re-brand has the potential to unleash and how AOL can get itself back in the game.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 07/13/06 at 11:17 AM | TrackBack (0)
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July 7, 2006

Friday Recap

eBay is settling a great example to all the kids out there. Why fight fair when you can cut your competition off at the knees with a pre-emptive strike? That seems to be eBay's philosophy after they changed their Safe Payments Policy to ban its members from using PayPal competitor Google Checkout. Google Checkout now finds itself in a list among a series of fraud-filled payment methods. That's completely fair.

AOL is considering offering its services for free to users with high-speed Internet and only charging dial-up users the $25.90 monthly fee. The plan may turn out to be good for customer retention, but I doubt it will have much affect on recruiting new users. The AOL name just doesn't carry the same weight it used to. These days when I think AOL, I think Vincent Ferrari.

However, this will make my parents very happy. My mother can access her beloved AOL chat rooms (and Slingo) and my father no longer has to pay the double high-speed Internet and AOL charge. On a personal note, I'm concerned about what this will do to my collection of free minute-filled AOL discs. They make for such excellent coasters.

Seth Godin asks: What happens after someone clicks. Are they more likely to click again? What if they've gone far down the road, clicking three or six or ten times?

Now I'll be honest, I don't always get Seth's analogies. But I got this one. And if I'm representative of a normal clicker (which is debatable on far too many levels), the answer is yes and YES. I wonder what it says about me that I clicked until the entire thing repeated itself. And then kept clicking.

Nathan linked us to a mighty interesting post by Emad Fanous who writes the Internet standards consortium W3C appears to be selling PageRank 9 and PR7 links for a mere $1,000 per year "donation". It's unclear whether W3C is using the links in to genuinely thank supporters for their donations, or if this is some kind of link selling ring. The list of supporters includes an array of sites you've never heard of, with the exception of one familiar name – SEO Book.

Also from Nathan: the news of a possible Google Health Scrapbook. The Deal's Senior Writer Joshua Jaffe writes that Google is in the development stages for a product that would allow users to "manage their entire medical lives, from adding medical providers, checking medical record and paying bills" online. Google is reportedly looking to partner up with WebMD and Intuit for the project. Could this be that "M Scrapbook" reference we heard about a few weeks back? Maybe the 'M' stands for medical and it had nothing to do with Google Notebook. Or maybe I'm just a geek...

Phil Lenssen showed us how to kill someone's access to Yahoo! China. Please don't tell the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries.

You know those people in your life who are afraid to tell you what they think of you to your face, in fear that you might hit them, so they drop little clues instead? Enter Google's mid-SERP "See Also" results for "therapy products". Heh, Google thinks Yahoo!'s crazy.

We blogged Wednesday that Amanda Congdon was leaving Rocketboom under seemingly non-amicable circumstances. Since then matters between Amanda and Andrew have taken a seedy turn for the worst, especially after Amanda posted an email she received from Andrew (in its entirety) on her blog, complete with her own notes.

Now, this is where it goes a step too far. If my years at LiveJournal have taught me anything, it's never to post an email you've received from anyone else, especially with commentary. Once you do, it can't be taken back and it moves everything over to the dark side. The whole Amanda/ Andrew situation makes me sad.

A forum member sought advice for dealing with a competitor who stole a flash graphic he created that still linked back to his site. The responses were wonderful. Forum members have evil minds.

We'll end this one with Ted Stevens' explanation of why the net neutrality amendment is a bad, bad thing:

"I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially. They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes."

Well, why didn't you just say so? Stevens' is right! We don't need to pass a silly neutrality amendment to give everyone equal access to the Internet. All we need to do is clean out the internet tubes. Or perhaps invest in some extra wide ones, you know, so more information can pass through them without getting stuck. Or, as a third option, maybe people should stop trying to email Stevens the entire Internet. It's kinda big.

P.S.

I'm being ~~told~~, ~~instructed~~, encouraged to include Dr. Stephen Hawking's recent question posed to the Yahoo! Answers community. He asked:

"In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?"

At the time of this posting, 16,6669 crazy people have already "answered" him. Answers range from simple a "it can't" or "it won't", to blatant sucking up, to complicated answers that insist people have given this far too much thought. Personally, I don't know why we're being asked a question Hawking has already answered. I am totally up for living on Mars. What say you?

Posted by Lisa Barone on 07/ 7/06 at 1:50 PM | TrackBack (0)
See more entries in AOL, Branding, Fun Stuff, Google, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engines, Yahoo

July 5, 2006

Welcome Back

Welcome back, kids. We hope you had a good Fourth because your mini-break is over and it's back to work you go. But keep those chins up. It could be worse – it could be Monday! Here are some of the weekend's best highlights.

Nathan is making me sorry I was away from my computer all day yesterday (though not too sorry, I was at Disneyland...). It looks like Ask put on a great fireworks display straight from its homepage. Whereas Google and Yahoo! just played with logos, the Ask site was decked out with a giant fireworks-filled image. Bold move. MSN doesn't like America (or soccer).

Yahoo China, Yahoo.com + an mp3 tab abundant with leaked recordings, spent its Fourth listening to rumblings of lawsuits on the horizon. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industries is set to sue China over the pirated material pointed to in its mp3 tab. However, it's important to note, Yahoo China doesn't actually host the illegal files, it just show users were they can find them. Is that really infringement? It's a blurry line.

Google says if Congress gives telephone companies' power to police the Internet, and the net neutrality amendment is rejected, and then telco abuse their given power, Google is going to file an anti-trust complaint against them. No telling what they'll do if Larry and Sergey both come into work with the same outfit, and neither has time to change, and their cars are out of gas, and Marissa is on her three minute lunch break.

The New York Times says Microsoft is running out of space and "looking for more elbow room". Oh, no. Is this like Google's server crisis? Way to spread the fear.

If you were lucky enough to be Gnomedex, I hear you were privy to some entertaining moments including Robert Scoble publicly getting kicked out of Second Life (bad Robert, baaad), a pointed keynote by Sen. John Edwards and Chris Pirillo doing, um, this. And then this after he realized he made the big screen. Sorry, Chris.

Speaking of Gnomedex, Google's total absence from the event hasn't gone unnoticed. In fact, Google seems to be missing a lot of "these things" lately. Where in the old days Google would be hosting parties and collecting user feedback, this time around there wasn't a logo, business card or even one article of Google swag in all of Seattle. What's going on with Google?

I can't help but think they're falling away from what made them successful. They used to take pride in learning from users. They were the cool kids at their own party with the cool swag. They built relationships out of trust and mutual respect. Now they're too good to show up at conferences and are alienating the people who use and rely on them most.

When you do that, people get angry and write cold, rather unfair articles about you in Business Week or perhaps worse, call you the Alanis Morrissette of the Web. Ouch.

If you haven't heard (and if you care), Amanda Congdon announced yesterday she would be leaving Rocketboom. Amanda makes it seem like she was fired but co-founder Andrew Baron is in the forums saying she quit. Whatever happened, the split seems less than amicable and Rocketboom fans will miss user-friendly Amanda.

Rumors say Amanda will move to LA to pursue other opportunities (Jason Calacanis already wrote her a sonnet, offered her a sweet deal at Netscape and called her "baby"), while Andrew will push forward with Rocketboom without her. Can Andrew and Rocketboom really go it alone?

Oh yeah, and Matt's back. Huzzah!

Posted by Lisa Barone on 07/ 5/06 at 3:07 PM | TrackBack (0)
See more entries in AOL, Branding, Google, Live Search, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engines, Yahoo

June 23, 2006

Friday Recap

The folks at Hammer Of Truth have outed Ask as having "a blatantly stupid filtering engine" (geez...) because it blocks even innocuous searches that deal with children and sex (like sex of child or talking to your children about sex). Any query that contains the words "child" and "sex" or "kids" and "sex" brings up a message from Ask directing users to its TOS instead of actual results.

Is Ask's engine a little too strict? Probably. Censoring words of any kind is a slippery slope, and not allowing users to search for educational information on sensitive topics will just send them to a different engine.

However, I do kind of like that searching for certain terms (sex [with no mention of children], rape, abuse, etc.) brings up education resources instead of the explicit content likely to be found on other engines. In fact, if a user searches for the term "sex", Ask allows you to Narrow or Expand You Search for topics like "child sex education", "where do babies come from", "sex education for teens" and others. The information is out there, it's all in the wording.

Coincidently, the Long Island politician who brought a suit against Google for profiting from child pornography has dropped his case after Google offered to sit down and resolve the issue with him. That's good to hear.

Michael Arrington gives us a sneak preview of what Digg will look like Monday morning. The new and improved Digg site will include six new topic categories, allow users to see items their friends "dugg", and will feature just enough Ajax that users won't have to refresh when switching between headlines and new stories. Sounds good. Jason Calacanis should have waited before re-releasing Netscape. He may have learned something.

Nart Villeneuve discovered that Tom Online, Skype's Chinese client, automatically installs censorware on users' computers without telling them and uses it to filter conversations. Once a user downloads Tom-Skype, an executable file called ContentFilter.exe is also placed on their computer. The program then installs a "keyfile" into their system designed to censor whatever words Tom Online employees plug into it. This keyfile cannot be erased even if a user tries to uninstall the Tom-Skype software. Nart has screenshots over on her blog. Some seriously scary stuff, or as I like to call it, SSSS.

The Google AdSense blog now answers users' questions in the form of short videos. Clever, I say. Now if they could just get their Google rep to seem a little less bored and a lot more like she's not reading her answers off a teleprompter. It's kind of ruining the warm and fuzzy feel.

Google Video is running a new feature called Free Today, which allows users to watch select premium videos for free as Google tests its new content sponsorship program. For a limited time, users can watch videos that would normally cost them between $.99 and $14.99 for free in return for watching an ad at the end. I like this for one reason: Felix!

Friday, June 30th is being harked as the day the spam will end. Why? Because that's when Matt Cutts will reportedly be back from his extended vacation. In case you're interested in tracking Matt by the hour, Thomas Bindl created the Matt Cutts' Vacation Countdownbeta. Cuttlets do tend to get a little crazy, don't they?

[In true Cuttlet spirit, I remind you there are only five days to get me this before my birthday on Wednesday. Your cooperation in this matter is much appreciated. Thank you.]

An article in Pacific Epoch claims Google expects to have over 1,000 employees in Google China by 2007. Guess they're not pulling out, huh. We expect the rest of the world to be working for Google by 2009.

Phil Lenssen put his art skills to work this week with his If Websites Were Remote Controls post. I'm especially fond of the MySpace remote, but I don't think the Google one is accurate. Would Google really ever feature an "off" button? Not likely.

One of the greatest things about children's books is there is always a good lesson inside. In order to prepare your young ones for the digital age, Matthew Baldwin gave us his cautionary tale, Files Are Not For Sharing. Don't let your kids hear about this on the streets. If you talk, they'll listen.

Or in case you're just looking for a baby, Barry Schwartz found some cheap ones being sold on eBay. Get 'em while they're hot!

If you haven't had a good cry lately (admit it, sometimes it helps), you may want to head over to Kim Krause's blog and read Why Are Baseball Pants Inside the Freezer? If that doesn't get you all choked up, pull the plug, man, you're already dead inside.

Kim's forum is also running a fun thread entitled You Know You've Been In SEO Too Long When. The more giggle-worthy responses include:

Someone found something and you ask "on which data center?"
You actually use SERP in a conversation.
When your first action on the website of a business partner is "view source".
You find yourself attempting to highlight text "just to make sure it isn't an image".
"Big Daddy" means anything to you but the band, movie or expression.
You can tell Larry and Sergey apart.
You read through a magazine and are unable to find an article, and you begin looking for ctrl + f keys in the magazine

If you ask me, someone needs to figure out how to implement that last one. It would also be especially helpful while grocery shopping. I'm just throwing it out there.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 06/23/06 at 3:09 PM | TrackBack (0)
See more entries in AOL, Ask, Branding, Design, Fun Stuff, Google, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engines

June 16, 2006

Friday Recap

It's been a tough week for Microsoft fans. First their beloved Scoble announced he was ending his reign as Microsoft's technical evangelist to join Valley-based startup PodTech.net. Then, yesterday Bill Gates announced his own impending departure from Microsoft as he begins the two year process of transferring his Chief Software Architect duties to Ray Ozzie. Who will the Window fanatics rally behind now? Ballmer? Doubtful. Most insiders have Ballmer bowing out in two to five years.

As a testament to the power of blogging, Scoble's exit received considerably more coverage and sparked far more emotion than Gates. The numbers tell the story. While we'll miss hearing about Microsoft through Scoble's honest eyes, we wish him the best over at PodTech. Poor, Chris Coulter. What on earth will he do now?

Reporters Without Borders found Yahoo! to be the worst offender in censorship tests among the search engines, even beating out local Chinese engine Baidu. The results are interesting but the "test's" methodology is somewhat suspect. They only queried six terms and only looked at the top ten results. I'd be interested in seeing this test with an expanded list of test terms and results.

Google will buy the more than 978,000 square feet of land that the Googleplex stands on, according to a filing released by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Google will pay $319 million for the property, as well as $315,000 a month for a ground lease fees. Yowsa.

MySpace has a plan: To keep users firmly planted and increase revenue, the social networking site will auction off its search space to a major search operator. Google, Yahoo! and MSN are all expected to put in bids for the job, and MySpace will (presumably) pick the engine who gives them the best offer. A rather nice position indeed.

Economist.com had a great article yesterday comparing Google, Yahoo!, MSN and our Ask. When Ask's Jim Lanzone was asked how his engine would topple Google's increasing inertia, he responded he would use "search aikido" to use their momentum against them. I love Ask.

Phil Lenssen created a list of Google OneBox results he'd like to see including OneBoxes for social profiles, Google Answers, Chat With A Googler, Instant Recipes and others. It amuses me how demanding people have gotten with OneBoxes. We've grown from wanting sites chock-full of relevant information to just wanting a #!*$ answer.

While I vastly enjoy Phil's finds, his rather long list of Google employee's Orkut pages concerns me. Seriously, he lists twenty of them. Twenty!

Business Week wrote a profile on Google's Marissa Mayer, complete with a full timeline of Marissa's day, and showed me why I will never be a vice president at Google – I require more than five hours of sleep to function and look pretty. And while I'm slightly jealous that Marissa gets to sleep in until 8am (!!), it comforts me to know she only lasts 45 minutes at the gym. I could totally take her.

When you're looking for a bit of nostalgia, we would encourage you to check out the histogram of the Search Engine Relationship Chart®. Remember when Overture was the King of Paid Search? Or when the Search Engine Relationship Chart® looked like a game of Twister gone wrong, instead of the precision-based diagram it is today? Where else can you visually track the Web's growth and many changes? Nowhere, I say.

Are you having trouble clearly reading this? IS THIS BETTER? If so, you may want to trek over to Big.com and try out their big font search engine. Searchers can select between a big, bigger and biggest font size. It's the search equivalent to those big buttoned phones you're likely to find in your great aunt's Brooklyn apartment. Or was that just mine?

Feel like talking to yourself but afraid your coworkers will stare? Try the Anagram Chat that mimics back what you type in true anagram form. I asked it how it was doing today and it said something mean about Yahoo. Heh. (If you don't know what an anagram is: First, shame on you. Second, go here.)

Also interesting, clever Vincent Ferrari recorded what happened when he tried to cancel his AOL service. What ensued is amazing. Or horrifying. I'm not sure which. AOL says they have since fired their horrendous customer service rep. That doesn't mean they're not employing a million more like him.

Oh, and congratulations to Nathan Weinberg who got married on Wednesday. Sending you lots of love from the Bruce Clay, Inc. gang!

Posted by Lisa Barone on 06/16/06 at 4:33 PM | TrackBack (0)
See more entries in AOL, Ask, Google, Microsoft, Search Engines, Yahoo

June 15, 2006

Things That Make You Go Hmm...

Jason Calacanis thinks copying is a "risk-taking bold step" for AOL -- The self-proclaimed renegade announced AOL will re-brand Netscape.com into "a collection of links to news articles, submitted by users and expanded upon by a staff of bloggers". You know, like Digg.

Actually, it's more than just a Digg clone. It also borrows features from del.icio.us (tags), Yahoo News (ranks stories), Google News (RSS feeds) and Slashdot (human editors). Wow. They sure get around.

The copycat site has thirty different categories ranging from religion, technology, politics, music, and an oddly named Do No Evil category. While I thought it odd AOL had created a Google category, the Do No Evil section is actually for articles dealing with "heroes and villains". I admit this confused me even further until I realized they meant articles about real heroes (activists, military, law enforcement etc.) and villains, and not Superman and the like.

Similar to Slashdot, Netscape has brought together a staff of eight full-time bloggers to do fact checking and provide additional reporting to stories tagged by users. Each category also has a paid anchor (editor) who controls their category's top spot and hosts 24/7 chat sessions.

Calacanis hopes the new community-driven news portal will revitalize the Netscape site, which has seen a 25 percent drop in traffic in the past year. Let's hope copying is in this season.

Yahoo! suffers common sense breakdown -- Yahoo! is being sued by the Colorado-based dating service lovecity.com for trademark infringement after allegedly bidding on the terms 'lovecity', 'www.lovecity' and 'lovecity.com' in Google AdWords to help promote Yahoo! Personals.

Seriously? That sounds completely absurd to me. Is Yahoo! that... well, never mind. Unfortunately, I was unable to replicate the search, but I did find some interesting results when searching for 'Yahoo! lovecity'. Weird stuff.

Google tries to distract the DOJ -- Google has combined its Government search with its personalized homepage feature to create a U.S. Government Search that makes it easier to find government information and "keep up to date on government news".

The advanced search is targeted towards U.S. government employees and contractor organizations, but may also be of interest to regular users. Searchers will be able to easily access government and commercial news sources, including the White House, Department of Defense, The Washington Post, and Google News. Ooo, daily Department of Defense briefings!

While, I don't see myself using this on a day-to-day (or weekly) basis, it did help me to answer the one pending tax question I had. Of course, now that it's answered I have no use for this.

eBay doesn't like you –Starting Monday, sellers in selected categories will be able to add a free "Skype Me" button to their listings so potential buyers can contact them with ~~endless~~ relevant questions. The feature will be available in fourteen high-dollar and complex categories, such as real estate, cars and trucks, silver coins and beds.

Maybe I'm alone in this, but I don't want to talk to buyers. That's why I'm selling my 1969 el Camino on eBay in the first place. Well, that and because I'm bad at lyin