Below is what happened in search today, as reported on
Search Engine Land and from other
places across the web:
From Search Engine Land:
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Looksmart’s Furl Gets A FaceliftFurl, a personal web-page clipping and sharing service that I reviewed several years ago, has a streamlined new look, and is also faster. Looksmart has also made it easier to create and find topics to help you organized your cache of saved web pages, and has improved the browser buttons and toolbar used to save pages. More on the updates here…. -
Google Picks North Carolina For Server FarmGoogle Plans N.C. Data Center by Forbes confirms Google has selected North Carolina over South Carolina as the location for their huge data center. Yesterday, we wrote how the Carolina’s are bidding against each other to win Google’s business. Google will be spending about $600 million on their new data center and should employee 210 people in the region of Lenoir. People in that region currently average an annual salary of $28,000, the jobs available at Google will average about $48,300. Congrats Andy!… -
Yahoo Debuts U.S. Schools Search ToolYahoo Real Estate has introduced a new Schools Search service that lets you search for U.S. schools by city and state or zip code. Results are plotted on a map, and you can sort by school district, distance from a specific location, grade level, or school type (public, private, charter). You can also plot nearby grocery stores, parks, restaurants and gas stations on the map. Yahoo built the service in partnership with not-for-profit GreatSchools.net. Detail pages for each school include facts such as enrollment numbers, student to teacher ratio, test score data and graphs and so on. Also included are… -
Google, Microsoft & Yahoo To Develop NGO Conduct CodeCIO reports that Microsoft, Google, along with Yahoo will be developing a code of conduct with the coalition of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to “promote freedom of expression and privacy rights.” This move is to help the companies’ ventures into China and help paint a better picture for the search giants in the public view…. -
Yahoo Tells Belgian Newspapers They Did Nothing WrongYahoo Denies Violating Belgian Copyright Law at the Wall Street Journal gives us insight into how Yahoo will be handling the legal threat by Belgian newspapers to sue Yahoo over violating copyright laws. Yahoo has claimed that they did not violate any copyright laws for “publishing snippets and links” to their newspapers. Yahoo released a statement saying, “We can confirm that Copiepresse has contacted us regarding the display of archived results on our Web search service and we will respond in an appropriate manner.” Now, Yahoo can either remove the content without going to court or they can take Google’s… -
Search Engines’ Test BedsIn Search of… Better Ways to Search at the Wall Street Journal goes through the different ways search engines like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask.com use “spin off” sites to test new features. We have reported about all these in the past, but the article offers a nice overview of many of the methods search engines test features. Google’s Test Site: SearchMash.com Yahoo’s Test Sites: AllTheWeb and AltaVista Microsoft’s Test Site: Ms Dewey Ask.com’s Test Site: Ask X The search engines also constantly test out new features to a subset of their users on their main sites…. -
Google Book Search To Add Chinese BooksAsiaMedia reports that Google has partnered with Cite Publishing Holding Group to bring Chinese books to Google Book Search. The service will enable users to search and read up to 20% of a book on their computer. The initial launch will be about 1,000 books, but they hope to have 3,000 book titles in Google Book Search by years end…. -
Yahoo Introduces Personal Finance SiteGary Price reports that Yahoo has launched a new site, named Yahoo Personal Finance. News.com explains that this new sub-site offers “free tools and how-to guides for tax planning, budgeting, real estate planning, and saving for college and retirement.” Gary explains they offer additional tools such as: financial calculators for mortgages, budgeting, and more. They also offer 13 “experts,” a financial glossary, finance rates and of course, how-to-guides. The content is licensed from CNNMoney.com, Consumer Reports, The Motley Fool and The Wall Street Journal…. -
Search Engine Land Comment Feed Now AvailableThanks everyone for all the great feedback on improving comments at Search Engine Land, after my post yesterday. I’m taking them all on board, and feel free to add more. In the meantime, we’ve brought up a feed of all comments posted to the site plus tweaked the main site feed to be a bit more reader-friendly More on all this below. You’ll find the comment it here: http://feeds.searchengineland.com/selcomments… -
Checking Out Allcheckin Travel SearchI’m going to Berlin to speak at a travel conference in March, which meant booking a flight. With a British Airways strike looming, I wanted an alternative to fly from my closest airport — London Heathrow — to Berlin. But no one but BA seems to fly to Berlin from Heathrow, according to Expedia UK. Time to cast my net further, I figured. So I turned back to a small UK and Europe oriented travel search engine I wrote about briefly back in 2005, AllCheckin. I wanted to jot down a few notes of what I thought. Over time, I’m… -
Google Librarian Central: Talking At LibrariansGoogle has created the Librarian Central Blog just in time for ALA Midwinter. The decision to create the weblog arose from their request for suggestions from librarians on how to improve the Google Librarian Newsletter, the two common ones being ‘make it a blog’ and ‘give us more current information’. The new weblog provides access to a number of resources for librarians, such as teaching tools, ‘your stories’ and videos. There are also links to eleven (count them – eleven) librarian weblogs and over 25 Google weblogs. As Google has identified librarians as an important group, although there are some… -
Google Advertising Google Audio AdsPhilipp Lenssen reports that Google is now promoting via AdWords their own Audio Ads product. A Google search on audio ads brings back an ad from Google, leading to http://www.google.com/ads/audioads/index.html….
Search News Headlines From Elsewhere:
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The
Year in Review, Google Webmaster Central Blog -
Google
Doesn’t “Get” Librarians…Again, Library Stuff -
Social
Bookmark Tool Updated, Online Marketing Blog -
Yahoo
Real Estate & School Search, Search Engine Journal -
Google
to Digitize More than a Million Books from the University of Texas at
Austin, Google Press Center -
SES
Site Re-launch, Search Engine Watch Blog -
Why
Marketing Agencies Shouldn’t Publish Their Fees, Marketing Pilgrim -
Yahoo!
Search Update Underway: 1/18 – 1/19, Search Engine Roundtable -
The
Value of Online Traffic, ClickZ -
Vertical
Search Auctions on Portals Coming Soon?, ClickZ -
Simple
and Affordable Viral Marketing – Refer a Friend, Search Engine Guide -
Search
Scent in the Search Engines, ClickZ -
New
Google AdSense Program Policies Targets Content Scrapers, Search Engine
Roundtable -
Are
subdomains no longer separate sites in the eyes of Google?, SEO Scoop -
Yahoo’s
Unlikely Amigos, BusinessWeek -
Google
opens dialogue with book publishers, News.com -
Google
Switch: Phone by Google and Samsung?, Gizmodo -
Reliance
and Yahoo Introduce Mobile IM, PC World India -
AOL’s
AIM Pages Adds New Search Features with More to Come, ResourceShelf -
Google
blogsearch has serious problems with Blogger-blogs, Wouter -
Google
Fixing .com Domains in UK Only Results, Search Engine Roundtable -
Yahoo!
Indexing & Crawling Google AdWords Links?, Search Engine Roundtable -
Link
Bait alone won’t do it. You need Link Ninjas, Jim Boykin -
Bloglines
Fixes Google Reader Problems, InsideGoogle -
Mobile
Patents 1-19-2007 – A Mobile Search Plugin Platform, SEO By The Sea -
The
Hardest Thing About Integrating MyBlogLog With Yahoo…, Jeremy Zawodny -
Tracking
Google Checkout sales, part 1, Google Analytics Blog -
MySpace.com,
News Corp. sued in assault cases, News.com -
Web
Based Feed Readers – How do they stack up?, Hitwise -
Traders
Bank On Volatility From Yahoo, WSJ.com -
Will
Yahoo!’s half-price sale click with advertisers?, E-consultancy.com -
Google
Beta Tests Audio Ads, RW Online -
API
Version 8 Now Available, AdWords API Blog