Below is what happened in search today, as reported on
Search Engine Land and from other
places across the web:
From Search Engine Land:
- 2007 Guide To
Linkbaiting: The Year Of Widgetbait?
Way back in 2005 we started talking about linkbait, a term that was coined on
Threadwatch which I owned and ran at the time. Linkbait was used to describe
viral, linkable content designed to attract thousands of links. Shortly after
that, I wrote The Art of Linkbaiting. It has been much cited over the last
year or so. Today, though a few laggards are still blinking and looking
confused whenever they hear the term, linkbaiting is recognized as the most
effective way to build links for a site. As linkbaiting enters its third year,
it makes sense to revisit the… - Google
Billboard & Google Kiosk Coming?
Clickz columnist Ryan Naraine wrote up some of his thoughts about a Google
patent application (Allocating advertising space in a network of displays)
that would enable advertising upon electronic displays and billboards in
shopping centers and other places, in his article Google Patent Filing Hints
at Digital Billboard Ad Network. While New Scientist wrote about the patent
filing last week, and I had a writeup on it the day it was published, Ryan
does a nice job of providing some context to how this electronic display
network might work…… - Boxxet Offers
"Best Of" Collections On Popular Topics
Boxxet is a new service which combines aspects of computer automation with
community and social commentary and ranking systems to create "box sets" of
web based content for specific topics. It’s an interesting idea—sort of a
multimedia directory of links to web, news and blog content, photos, forums,
online bookmarks and "stuff," products available for online purchase that
relate to a particular subject. The idea is to filter the mass of information
available online, presenting only the best or freshest content. While the
resulting "box sets" are generally on topic, ironically, I found myself a bit
overwhelmed more often than… - Google AdSense
Updates Program Policies & Competitive Ads Policy
Google AdSense updated their program policies today. While most of it was
simply clarifying or officially making changes to policies (such as images
next to ad units) they also made one major change to publishers who also use
ad networks or in-house advertising with ad units that resemble AdSense ad
units, or those who do ad rotation with AdSense and another ad network such as
the Yahoo Publisher Network. And this could result in some unhappy webmasters
who will need to make changes to their sites running AdSense as a result…. - Yahoo TagMaps:
Photos + Maps + Tags
ResourceShelf and O’Reilly Radar discuss a new offering from Yahoo Research
Berkeley, in California: TagMaps. TagMaps are something like the word "tag
clouds" meeting maps and Flickr. There are currently three offered, as
described from the TagMaps site: World Explorer: "Explorer is based on photos
users upload to the Flickr website. The World Explorer engine analyzes the
information tied to the photos (such as location and tags) to find the main
‘attractions’ in each location and in every zoom level and compute their
‘importance’ " NightExplorer: "Night Explorer is based on the exact same idea,
only our computation only take… - First Google,
Then Microsoft, Now Belgian Newspapers Take On Yahoo
TheAge reports that Copiepresse, Belgium’s French-speaking newspapers, are now
threatening to sue Yahoo for violating copyright laws. The group does not want
Yahoo giving web users archived access to newspaper articles that the
newspapers would otherwise charge for. It will be interesting to watch how
Yahoo handles this…. - JP Morgan
Report Shows PayPal Dominating Google Checkout
Via Search Engine Journal, JP Morgan released a report named Google Checkout
vs. PayPal (PDF). The report shows that Google Checkout has potential but
PayPal is still dominating the field. Here are the key points, as per the
report: Surveyed about 1,100 online buyers in 2006 Google Checkout Adoption
hits 6% in first year Google Checkout Users Skew Male, Affluent, and Young But
Google Checkout Needs to Work Out Some Kinks PayPal Maintains Its Leadership
Position. PayPal’s 42% penetration rate in 2006 was 7x that of Google
checkout…. - Will Paid
Search Conquer The Mobile Internet?
To say there’s a lot going on with mobile right now is to state something more
than obvious. The carriers, the handset makers and the mobile content
providers are in what amounts to a frenzy of competition and business
development as they try and position themselves for what they see as the next
really big opportunity: the mobile Internet…. - Google’s
Carolina Moves: $100 Million Tax Breaks In North, Server Farm Coming To South?
Caldwell tries to land Google at the Citizen Times and Bidding War for Google:
It’s Expensive, But What Is the Alternative? by the Local Tech Wire document
how North Carolina is offering major tax breaks to Google in order to
encourage Google to build a massive data center in their state. The Google
data center is expected to require 210 new jobs and take up possibly 150 acres
of land. In exchange for this, North Carolina is offering a $100 million tax
break over the next 30 years. But it is not just North Carolina that wants
Google’s name, South… - Star Your
Favorite Questions at Yahoo Answers
Yahoo is now allowing users to vote for their favorite questions at Yahoo
Answers by adding a star next to interesting or high-quality questions.
Similar to Flickr’s “Interestingness