Search Engines

Google Sites Still Dominates Online Video
Google's dominance in online video seems to be as sure as its dominance in the search realm, if not more so. More...

CPC Data for April
Efficient Frontier recently unveiled the average cost-per-click information, by vertical, observed during April 2008 in the U.S. The "mortgage" category saw the biggest change from March, followed by "auto finance". More...

Yahoo Answers is Popular
Among Yahoo!’s many products and services, Yahoo! Answers is undoubtedly one of its best, and users around the globe seem to be riding the wave. More...

Click Fraud is Down, and Up
The latest numbers released by Click Forensics, a traffic quality management company, indicate that while click fraud during the first quarter of 2008 is down compared to the fourth quarter of 2007, it is up compared to the same quarter last year. More...

Searchers: Smarter, Lazier, Both?
A recent study published by iProspect (in conjunction with JupiterResearch) reveals that searchers are feeling less and less adventurous in their pursuit of good search results. More...

Google is Stronger Than Ever
The most recent figures released by Hitwise show that Google’s dominance in search has reached its highest peak. More...

Finance Category Sees CPC Increase
It’s expected that major economic trends will be reflected in various types of online data. Average cost-per-click (CPC) data from March 2008 released by Efficient Frontier confirms this, as various finance-related categories saw relatively large month-to-month jumps. More...

Yahoo Answers Handles Majority of Questions Asked Online
Hitwise recently reported on the traffic details for question and answer Web sites. Not surprisingly, Yahoo! Answers received the bulk of this traffic, with a few other sites lending a hand to curious users looking to take advantage of user-generated wisdom of crowds More...

Yahoo, Google, Microsoft are Top U.S. Web Properties
The latest figures released by comScore indicate that Yahoo was the Web property that attracted the most unique visitors in January 2008 in the U.S. More...

Baidu Begins Testing Hi
While Baidu holds a strong leadership position in China’s search engine market, holding a 60.1% share at the end of the fourth quarter of 2007 (to Google’s 25.9% share), it has yet to set foot in the instant messaging market in its homeland. More...

Google Tops U.K. List in January
A recent report released by comScore World Metrix showed that Google Sites attracted the largest audience of unique visitors in the U.K. during the month of January. More...

Mobile Search Landscape Favors Downloads
While a mobile search engine has yet to emerge as the clear leader, there do seem to be clear trends in terms of what mobile searchers are looking for. Downloads appear to be far and away the most popular search category. More...

Google, Yahoo, Ask.com Gain in January
January brought no surprises for the top seven search engines in the U.S. Of course, if you're like the vast majority of online searchers, no rankings have changed, though market share figures have fluctuated slightly. More...

Google Topples Microsoft in Canada
Recent numbers released by comScore Media Metrix indicates that Google was the most visited online property in Canada in January More...

Google Search Results With a Side of Video Ads
As search results are incorporating more images and videos, it seems logical enough that the same should happen for those text ads that appear beside these results. Google has begun testing this notion this week, though not many users will notice it. More...

Click Fraud Grows
Click Forensics, Inc. recently released its Click Fraud Index for the fourth quarter of 2007. Click fraud for the pay-per-click industry reached 16.6% during the last quarter of last year, the highest rate observed since the index was launched at the end of 2006 More...

Top Gaining Internet Properties, Categories, Search Engines in 2007
Recent figures released by comScore highlight the top gaining Web properties, categories, and search engines. More...

Yahoo! Amidst Ad Appeal
Amidst all the hoopla concerning Microsoft's proposal to Yahoo, and Google's ensuing response, it becomes easy to forget what all the fuss is about. More...

YouTube = Yawn, Google = Frown in Korea
While YouTube remains popular in the U.S. and in various markets across the globe, it has been met with tepid responses from users in South Korea More...

Google is Top Parent Company, FullTiltPoker.com is Stickiest
According to recent figures released by Nielsen Online, Google remained the top parent company in the U.S. in December, while FullTiltPoker.com continued to be the stickiest brand. More...

Baidu is Top Dog in China, Third Worldwide
Baidu is to China what Google is to the U.S. In other words, while Google has a stranglehold on the U.S. search market, it has nothing on Baidu in China. More...

Wikia Search Disappoints, Wales Defends
Regardless of who is responsible for the incredible hype that surrounded Wikia Search, the search engine that has been anticipated for over a year was welcomed with frowns and disappointment. More...

Google Tops November Rankings
According to the latest figures from Nielsen Online, Google retained its familiar spot atop the search engine rankings for November 2007. More...

AOL Bids Farewell to Netscape, Pushes Firefox
In addition to bidding 2007 farewell, AOL will be thrusting the fallen Netscape Browser out the door in 2008. More...

Search Engines Attract Self-Searchers
A recent report released by the Pew Internet and American Life Project indicated that 47% of U.S. adult Web users have searched for information about themselves More...

Yahoo Trumps Google…in Japan
According to comScore World Metrix, Yahoo! finished above Google to be hailed as the top Japanese online property in October 2007, in terms of unique visitors. More...

Britney, WWE, Paris Top 2007 Yahoo Searches
Yahoo! has released its top ten search terms for 2007, and Britney Spears has retained her throne at the top of the list. Her public downfall ... More...

Google Increases Its Lead in October
The most recent comScore figures show that Google led the search engine rankings yet again in October 2007. More...

G.cn = Google.cn
Apparently, Google’s minimalist approach to search does not pertain exclusively to its home page. In China, Google has slimmed down its Google.cn domain name to G.cn. More...

Worldwide Search
Recent figures released by comScore’s qSearch 2.0 service shed some light on the global state of the search realm. It should not be a surprise that Google is faring quite well in areas outside of the states. More...

Google Wins in September
Google topped the list of search providers in the U.S. during the month of September, once again dominating the field. More...

Yahoo Lists Top Costume Searches
It may not be nearly as significant or interesting as the monthly search engine rankings, but Yahoo!’s listing of the top TV-related Halloween costume searches is revealed to the public for the taking. After all, it is nearing that wonderful time of tricks and treats. More...

Top Search Terms for September
The latest Hitwise figures concerning the top 10 search terms in 10 categories were released recently. MySpace and PayPal appear to be holding onto their popularity. More...

Yahoo Should Take Drastic Measures
Jeffrey Lindsay, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, thinks that Yahoo! would be worth a lot more if they either broke apart their online businesses or conducted a facelift, which might even include turning its back on its search engine mainstay. More...

Google Leads Search Field in August
According to the latest figures released by Nielsen//NetRatings, Google handled the majority of all Web queries online in the U.S. in August. Yet again, the list was absent of any surprises. More...

Google Performs “Poorly” in the U.S.
Uptime monitoring company Pingdom recently listed Google’s downtime in 32 countries, and to some people’s surprise, the U.S. fared relatively poorly. Brazil, of all countries, experienced the least downtime, while Sweden experienced the most. More...

Canada Stands Up to Google
Google Maps’ Street View feature has caused some buzz since its debut in May. Much of the buzz has been negative, with countless publications and Web sites finding bizarre and disturbingly private images available on Street View. More...

Google Tops Search Engines in July
Recent figures released by Nielsen//NetRatings shows that Google is, once again, the top search provider in the U.S. The numbers collected for the month of July 2007 show that Google handled 4.1 billion queries during the month, or... More...

GDrive Looks Dead…For Now
After a video titled "Googley Blues" was made public for a short while on YouTube (before being marked "Private"), it seems that the ominous GDrive looks to be on the backburner at the Googleplex, if not totally killed. More...

ComScore Unveils qSearch 2.0, Google is Happy
A few weeks ago, Nielsen//NetRatings decided to shift its focus from page views to the length of visits on Web sites. On Monday, comScore followed up with a change of its own by introducing qSearch 2.0. Google in particular will... More...

The Significance of Green for Search Engines
Green is quickly becoming a very important color for search engines. And no, this does not concern cash. More...

Wikia Search Engine Picking Up Steam With Grub
Last Friday, Wikipedia founder and Wikia co-founder Jimmy Wales announced that Wikia had acquired Grub, a Web crawler that utilizes unused computer processing time on users’ computers to crawl the Internet’s pages. Users can... More...

Privacy Becoming the New Battleground for Search Engines
Last week, Microsoft added Ask Sponsored Listings to its adManager Beta search advertising service, which is part of its Microsoft Office Live platform. This week the two companies linked arms again, but this time concerning... More...

Google to Shorten Shelf Life of Stale Cookies
On Monday morning, Google’s Global Privacy Counsel, Peter Fleischer, made a post on Google’s official blog. The topic at hand concerned cookies and Google’s new stance on the issue. Though it’s hardly drastic in nature, it is a... More...

Only Microsoft Gains in June
According to the most recent numbers released by comScore, Microsoft was the only one of the five major search engines to actually gain ground in June 2007. Even the almighty Google lost a few points during the summer month. More...

Google Gains, Yahoo, Ask and AOL Lose in May
May was another good month for Google in terms of its share of the search market. According to the latest figures released by comScore’s monthly qSearch analysis, Google owned 50.7% of the total search market in May... More...

Privacy Drama For Google
Privacy International, a company founded in 1990 and based in London, recently released a report that ranked Google last place among Internet companies in terms of privacy. None of the companies scored highly, but... More...

Google Says “No” To Essay Writing Services
In a controversial move, Google recently made it known that it would no longer run advertisements for essay writing services on its AdWords platform. Universities and those employed in academic fields applauded the move... More...

McAfee Study Finds AOL Has Safest Search Results
A recent study conducted by McAfee’s SiteAdvisor group titled "The State of Search Engine Safety" concluded that of the five largest search engines, AOL had the safest search results while Yahoo! had the most unsafe results. More...

Google Hoping For Stronger Presence in South Korea
While it’s no secret that Google absolutely dominates U.S. search, it’s also no surprise that Google lags behind domestic competitors in various overseas markets. South Korea, where about 70% of homes have high-speed Internet... More...

Google Dominates Search in April
Figures released by Nielsen//NetRatings on Monday indicate that to no one’s surprise, Google is tops in the search market once again, and the competition is very far behind. More...

Google Adds To Its Lead
Another month, another confirmation of Google’s dominance in the search engine realm. March only revealed what we already knew about Google’s share of the search market pie: it’s big, and it’s growing. More...

Comcast Goes With Yahoo
The past week or so has been an eventful one for Yahoo!, the second most used search engine in the U.S. First it swooped up online advertising exchange Right Media, which follows on the heels of Google’s DoubleClick... More...

Dodgeball Founders Quit Google
Back in 2005, Google acquired Dodgeball, a mobile social networking service that allows users to send messages to the service containing their whereabouts, which are then relayed to selected friends to let them know... More...

Microsoft Leads the Grumbling
As expected, Microsoft wasted little time voicing its opinion of Google’s latest monster $3.1 billion acquisition of advertising network DoubleClick. However, they are not alone. More...

A Beginners Guide To Search Advertising Part 1
We here at the Digital Moses Confidential have been covering the online advertising industry for over 3 years now. We have a combined 8 years of search engine advertising experience. Our years of search engine advertising... More...

Yahoo and Google Alter Ads
The past few days have been eventful for Yahoo! and Google ads, with the former announcing future word limits and the latter altering some colors, functionalities, and formats. More...

The Possible Importance of DoubleClick
DoubleClick has been the rumored apple of Microsoft’s eye since reports began popping up last week about a possible acquisition of the third-party ad firm. Things got even more interesting earlier this week when Google was... More...

Google Benefiting From Advertisers’ Ignorance
Jon Morris is the founder of Internet Marketing Initiative, which is a search engine marketing firm. He claims that if advertisers using Google’s ad platform knew what they were doing, they would save themselves $2.1 billion... More...

Google Gains, Everyone Else Loses
February was a tough month for every search engine whose name did not start with “G.” The most recent figures released by comScore’s qSearch indicate that Google... More...

Comcast Considers Breaking Up with Google
Google edged out Microsoft to win a big AOL advertising deal in late 2005. However, it seems that Microsoft now has another opportunity to take a shot at Google, the company that is causing the most headaches for the Windows... More...

Jury is Still Out on Panama
A couple weeks ago, comScore indicated that Yahoo!’s new search ads, delivered on the new platform called Panama, saw a jump in click-through rates. Yahoo!’s stock has reaped the benefits, growing more than... More...

Yahoo Ads Seeing More Clicks
By now, many people know the power of online advertising. Google derives virtually all of its financial strength from it, site owners across the globe are making good money from it, and online tricksters everywhere are doing their... More...

Wikipedia Now Top Ten, Needs Wikiasari’s Help
Regardless of how reliable Web users deem Wikipedia, there is little doubt that it has grown into one of the more influential and referred-to sites on the Internet today. A recent report by comScore confirms this notion, indicating that... More...

Google Being Evil in Poland?
So, what kind of beef could Google possibly have with a small group of Polish poets? The kind that’s bad enough to spur the search giant to file for legal action against them. More...

Google Presently on the Attack While Mobile Foes Loom
In the midst of all its other morsels of juicy happenings, Google has inadvertently (or cunningly) reminded the Web of its seemingly inevitable dive into the office productivity suite realm. This time it’s a presentation product... More...

Google Looking to Invade Video Games
Google has a stranglehold on the search engine realm, and consequently dominates Internet advertising, but the company is not satisfied with that. In recent times, Google has been making progress in its print, radio, and even... More...

Google, Yahoo Gain Ground in December
According to the most recent numbers released on Monday by comScore Networks, Google and Yahoo were the only two of the five top search engines to gain ground in December 2006. Microsoft, Ask, and Time Warner all fell a... More...

Wazap Headed Stateside
Don’t look now, but another search engine with a specific target audience is looking to make its way into the U.S. market. More...

ChaCha Receives Funding, Hints at New Stage of Search
Google may be the undisputed king of search, but for some reason new search engines keep popping up. And probably for good reason. There are niches and methods of delivering information that just can’t be bottled up in a... More...

Evil Google in 2007?
“Don’t be evil.” This has been Google’s long-standing motto, and is supposed to embody what the search giant is, but with a recent blog post by Firefox co-founder Blake Ross, there is more than a subtle indication that Google... More...

Top Search Terms of 2006: Four Different Takes
The line “Top Search Terms of 2006” has a certain ring to it. It’s always interesting to get a glimpse into what searchers were most eager to see or read about online, and top search terms are a nice way of summarizing that... More...

Google Not Embraced in Booming Russia
Though Google is a search and advertising behemoth stateside, it has had its share of problems mimicking this dominance overseas, and Sergey Brin’s own motherland, Russia, is no exception. More...

Google Cheating on Firefox?
Last Friday, Google’s homepage was “marred” with a huge banner recommending its users to download the “new, safer Firefox 2.0” placed at the very top of the page. Then on Monday, Google threw a slight curveball at those who closely watch the search engine’s every move when it displayed... More...

Baidu Plans on Entering Japan Search Market
So, what do you do after you’ve experienced the number one spot in China’s search market? According to the country’s leading search engine, Baidu, the answer is to head over to Japan. More...

Google Still Hogs Search Share
Google is still the king of search, no matter who you listen to. According to figures released by Nielsen//NetRatings, more than 3 billion searches were conducted on Google in October, which was about 49.6% of the total search... More...

Google Bringing Negative Attention to YouTube?
Since Google’s big acquisition of YouTube on October 9, it seems that the video site has become a big-time target for angry content owners. Almost two weeks ago, the Google-owned YouTube complied with the requests of the... More...

AOL Unveils FullView
AOL has been quite active in recent times. They announced a big business model shift, enhanced its e-mail product, and notched deals with big media companies to offer various movie, music, and television videos for download... More...

Google Continues Dominance, Yahoo! Falters
September was a good month for Google’s search share. It increased its share by 1% from August, hitting the 45.1% mark, according to comScore qSearch. Nielsen//NetRatings was even more optimistic, indicating that... More...

AOL to See Shrinkage and Possible Acquisition
Jonathan Miller, CEO of AOL, indicated last weekend in an interview with German newspaper Die Welt that the company would most likely shrink for the next two years as it makes its transition from a paid-subscription Internet... More...

Keyword Advertising - to police or not?
On September 28th a judicial decision was handed down in Google’s favor, a decision impacting the multitudes of businesses that engage in paid search advertising. This decision, believed to be the first United States court ruling of... More...

Local Search’s Growth Bolstered by Google, Yahoo
According to recent figures released by comScore Networks, local search is continuing its ascent. The study for the month of July found that about 109 million people in the U.S., or about 63% of the American online population, performed local... More...

Google’s Search Share Jumps Again
According to Hitwise, Google attracted 60.29% of the total U.S. search volume for the four weeks ending September 9th, 2006. This sets a new high for the year, jumping slightly above the previous high of 60.23% reached for the four... More...

Yahoo, AOL Show off E-Mail Makeovers
Yahoo made its beta version of a new version of Yahoo Mail available to the general public. It resembles Microsoft’s Outlook e-mail client with its use of reading panes and a preview window. The new Yahoo Mail uses an AJAX... More...

Google Will Be Listening, and Maybe Watching?
If you are someone who is already uncomfortable with Google’s ability to stockpile loads of your browsing information, then the recent murmurs of Google developing an eavesdropping technology will certainly not sit well with... More...

Google TV Ads Coming Soon
It appears that Google has set its covetous eyes on yet another advertising realm: television. With recent comments by Google CEO Eric Schmidt, the registration of some new domains by Google last week, and with some... More...

Google More Popular in Europe than in U.S.
The latest report from comScore indicates that Google was visited by 75% of the European online population in July. Interestingly enough, this exceeds the 60% of the American online population that visited Google’s properties in the... More...

Google Loses Search Share
According to comScore Networks’ monthly qSearch analysis of search engine activity released on Sunday, Google actually saw its share of online searches decrease in the month of July 2006, while Yahoo!, Time Warner, and Ask each... More...

Consumers Unsatisfied with Portals
According to the most recent study conducted by the American Customer Satisfaction Index, customers in the U.S. are becoming less satisfied with major portals and search engines, Google included. More...

MySpace and Google Make $900 Million Deal
On Monday, Google garnered the favor of social networking behemoth MySpace.com by agreeing to make minimum payments of $900 million over the course of the deal that will last three years and nine months. This figure is... More...

AOL Embarrasses Themselves and Their Users
“This was a screw up, and we’re angry and upset about it,” said AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein in a statement apologizing for the release of sensitive query logs earlier this week. What AOL needs to worry about now is... More...

Lycos and the Importance of Linguistics in Search
Remember Lycos, the search offspring dot-com bubble poster child CMG Information Services, Inc? Well, Lycos is still around, quiet, but still around after changing hands a few times. Now Christopher Mohn, heir to the... More...

To BMT or Not To BMT?
When mentioned among SEMs (Search Engine Marketers) in a casual setting, Bid Management Tools, which will be referred to as BMTs in this article, often dampen conversations, like talking property tax law at a cocktail party. This is... More...

Search Engine Success Lies with Keywords
Webmasters mustn’t be daunted by overarching powers the search engine sometimes seem to have over websites on the Internet. Search engines need to be considered, after all, simple and efficient machines - ascribing them... More...

Google’s Platypus is GDrive
About two weeks ago Google’s rumored “GBuy” was finally unveiled in the slightly varied form of Google Checkout. Now it appears that Google’s rumored “GDrive” is also materializing right before our eyes in the form of a... More...

Leaders in Alternative Search
There is a search engine based in Pasadena, California called Snap.com with a stated desire to become “The other way to Search”. All it takes is a click and a search or two to see how Snap.com is a true alternative to the norms of... More...

Google Checkout, Concerns Unveiled
After more than a year of anticipation, Google finally revealed Google Checkout late last week. Though the new Google product is not the rumored “GBuy” that was feared to directly compete with PayPal, it offers similar features and will... More...

Ad Scheduling Introduced to AdWords Users
Late Thursday night Google unveiled ad scheduling (or dayparting, as many people call it) to its AdWords users around the world at no charge. This new feature will allow a campaign manager to optimize their return on investment... More...

Gmail is Still Beta for a Reason
I think it was the threat of a Gmail revolution that prompted Yahoo to increase the storage space parceled to its free email accounts last year. (Yahoo’s paid email at the time, of course, gave storage to spare. It’s an example of how the... More...

Google Users in China Must Choose Between .Com or .Cn
Google has fallen in with the ranks of other Western companies that have bent their knee to China’s censorship requirements. Google’s main site, Google.com, is still accessible in China, but at a much slower speed than the... More...

Ask Unveils Blog Search Feature
Ask acquired Bloglines in February of 2005, but has so far kept both sites separate. However, with the release of a new blog and feed search function Ask has combined some of the technologies of both sites and is offering the... More...

Text Links Tips
Text links are loved by some and hated by others, but regardless of what your personal stance on the issue is text links are tools that should be, at the very least, understood... More...

Google Captures 50% of April Searches
According to Nielsen//NetRatings, Google garnered 50% of all searches conducted in April, once again proving their dominion over the search realm. Yahoo! was second with 22%, while MSN was third with 11%... More...

Microsoft and EBay: Doubtful
According to the New York Post, Microsoft has been involved in very covert talks with eBay about acquiring the giant online auction site. Discussions have cooled off recently because of the worries about anti-trust issues, but the Post... More...

Microsoft’s Entrance to AdCenter: Google and Yahoo, Be Prepared!
Let’s welcome Microsoft’s AdCenter to the PPC advertising field. A quick question, though, why is AdCenter here? Microsoft, the juggernaut, sat on the sidelines for quite awhile and watched as first Overture (later bought by Yahoo... More...

Google Sandbox Plays the SEO
A few weeks ago, I presented myself with a challenge - to do some Internet sleuthing and get to the bottom of this perplexing condition that newly search engine optimized websites (that’s SEO) face known as the Google... More...

8.5 Percent of Sponsored Links “Risky”
According to a recently published study conducted by McAfee SiteAdvisor, 8.5% of sponsored links on major search engines led users to “risky” sites, as opposed to 3.1% of natural results. The study tested results of popular... More...

U.S. Department of Justice: IE7 Not a Problem
Despite Google’s cries of foul play, the Department of Justice has found nothing wrong with the default search box settings in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7, which is still in beta. Back in early May, Google filed a complaint... More...

Image Search
The use of search engines in locating information has become so central to our daily lives that it is hard to imagine a world where one cannot simply “google” driving directions just before heading out to the car. This availability of... More...

AdWords to Use Local Times
For those not living on the west coast and who have been using Google AdWords accounts, it has become a subtle but annoying task to continually remind yourself of how far your local time zone is to the Google’s Mountain... More...

Yahoo Plans Changes to Ad System
On Monday Yahoo! revealed long-awaited changes to its online advertising platform, which will be implemented in three phases. This comes in the face of waning hope that Yahoo! can keep up with Google’s online advertising... More...

Search in the Far East
To stay relevant or even solvent, a company must keep itself informed. That’s why research, of both the in-house and outsourced varieties, is essential. At ConductSearch.com keeping tabs on who’s doing what in the marketplace is... More...

Google Keeps on Growing
According to a report issued late on Monday by ComScore Networks, Google enlarged its share of the U.S. search market for the eighth consecutive month in March. Of the top five search engines, Google and Ask (formerly AskJeeves)... More...

Goodmail Fails to Charm Gmail
Much to the chagrin of AOL, Google broke its silence on Goodmail’s CertifiedEmail system last week and said that it would not be implementing any services that would compel senders to pay in order to ensure their e-mails’... More...

Google Calendar Makes Its Debut
After months of speculation and expectation, Google finally unveiled its Google Calendar on April 13th. Google Calendar is a free, online calendar that allows users with a Google account to schedule events, reminders, and other... More...

Almost Half of February Searches Were Googled
February was just another month in search that was dominated by Google. According to individual reports issued by Nielsen//NetRatings and comScore Media Metrix, Google held on to its top spot in the share of the overall U.S... More...

Yahoo Involved in Click Fraud?
Ben Edelman, a PhD candidate at Harvard and a spyware researcher, has recently come out with some new follow-up information about his research in August of 2005 concerning spyware vendors receiving payments from... More...

Yahoo! Updates Toolbar
Yahoo!’s updated Yahoo! Toolbar includes improvements for both IE and Firefox users. For users of IE 5 or 6, tabbed browsing capability has been added to appease users until IE 7 is released. The Toolbar for Firefox users... More...

AdCenter : What Would Jack Bauer Say?
Listen to me, okay? What I’m going to tell you is very, very important: being top banana in search doesn’t mean anything. Don’t click away, I’m serious, you’ve got to believe me. Quick, run a check on Excite.com - you must, no one else... More...

Google Unveils Google Finance
Google finally has an answer to Yahoo and MSN’s financial sites in its new beta version of Google Finance. It takes advantage of Google’s long-reaching access to resources such as news and blogs, and offers unique features that... More...

Yahoo! Publisher Network Updates Terms and Conditions
On Monday, the Yahoo! Publisher Network sent an e-mail to its publishers about updates to its terms and conditions. Compared to the prior version of the terms and conditions to the Yahoo! Publisher Network beta program, there... More...

Local Search to Approach $1 Billion in 2006
In a new Borrell Associates report entitled “2006 Local Search Advertising,” Borrell projects that the local paid-search market will reach $987 million this year, which is more than double the $418 million it earned in 2005. This figure... More...

Google-Gov’t Impasse Resolved: Well, For Now
The issue of Internet privacy rights in America has been a hot topic of late. The latest flashpoint was a showdown in San Jose, CA pitting the Department of Justice against the giant search engine Google. Essentially, the Department of... More...

Privacy for Personalization?
At the relatively small Search and Privacy track at last week’s SES conference in New York, the Fourth Amendment was a source of major discussion. In light of the recent subpoenas being sent to the four major U.S. search... More...

Inbound Links and Traffic
Most people already know that getting inbound links is one of the most important aspects of generating traffic to your site. Obtaining links from sites outside of your own will not only generate traffic for you, but it will also spread... More...

Beyond Keyword Development
Get organized. Whether it be in categories (Yahoo!) or AdGroups (Google), it is important to have all of your keywords placed in logically themed groups. There are endless ways to group keywords, but usually, I see keywords... More...

Is PageRank Still Significant?
PageRank has garnered a lot of attention, and the continuous updates to PageRank seem to indicate that things are going through a slight change. Sites that were once ranked lower have risen, while sites that used to be More...

Demand Service With Your On-Demand Software
On Demand! We want it here, we want it now. Hell, we want it yesterday. Considering the instantaneous nature of the Information Age, these requests are reasonable to make of any technical solutions provider. More...

Google Under Fire, But Search Is Strong
Could the Sports Illustrated Jinx, where teams and athletes featured on the cover famously floundered soon after publication; have spread to their fellow Time, Inc. More...

Search Engine Revolution on the Horizon?
The words “search engine” have become virtually synonymous with Google and maybe even Yahoo! and Microsoft. These Web leviathans have dominated the search engine scene and it is difficult to imagine it any other way. But is there a revolution that will usurp these three kings of their thrones? More...

Google Desktop 3 Creates Privacy Concerns
Google’s new beta version of its Google Desktop 3 allows users to transfer information from one computer to another, essentially allowing them “access to anything from anywhere,” as Gartner analyst Allen Weiner put it. In order to utilize this service, users must agree to allow Google to store the data on their servers for no more than 30 days. More...

Are Internet Tolls Ahead?
Just like highways, the Internet experiences heavy traffic. Up until now, the one thing that differentiated regular highways and the Internet was that no matter how much traffic there was, the Internet never required anyone to pay tolls in order to avoid major streams of traffic. More...

Google To Challenge PayPal With GBuy
Last March, Google created the Google Payment Corporation. It is now being reported that Google has spent the past nine months recruiting online retailers to test a payment system named GBuy. Users will see the GBuy icon next to... More...

The Super Bowl of Earnings
For analytical types, the last two weeks in January are like this Sunday for football fans. It’s during these times that the public companies, including those in our space, announce their fourth quarter earnings. All the guessing ends More...

Google.cn: The Internet As Beijing Sees It
In November I wrote an article and referenced a trip that ICMediaDirect.com’s VP of Business Development, Diana Lee, took to China. She participated in Shanghai’s inaugural ad:tech conference. It was a great trip and our More...

Google News No Longer Beta
In September 2002 Google News was launched in beta mode with the hope of giving readers the ability to read not only one perspective, but many, on whatever topic of news was out there. Over three years later Google News has More...

Yahoo! Leads By Conceding
Last week, Yahoo! admitted that Google has a stranglehold on the search engine market and that they can not do anything to change that. Essentially, they announced that they were content with being #2 in the search engine More...

Ads on Rooftops Aimed at Google Maps?
If you have ever taken a flight from or to busy airports such as O’Hare in Chicago or LaGuardia in New York City, you may have noticed the big red bull’s-eyes on the rooftops of Target stores nearby. These rooftop ads are... More...

Google Owned 46% of Searches in November
According to Nielsen/NetRatings, Google captured 46.3% of search queries in November 2005, while Yahoo! trailed behind with 23.4%. Approximately 2.4 billion searches were done through Google’s search engine, while about... More...

How Search Engines Have Changed Public Relations
When it comes to Public Relations, the driving philosophy that underlies even the most minute aspect of a campaign is that perception equals reality. This is as true as ever in the Interactive Age because anyone with Internet access has the ability to... More...

Google Set to Acquire dMarc
On Tuesday, Google announced that it will pay $102 million up front for dMarc Broadcasting Inc., a radio advertising firm. An additional $1.14 billion will be paid over the next three years if specified revenue and ad performance targets are met. This... More...

Google Surprising #1 in China
Baidu, not Google, is China’s leading search engine in terms of market share. Baidu holds 51.5% of the market, while Google trails behind with 32.9% of the market. So it was a surprise when a recent study done by Keynote Systems... More...

Et Tu, AOL?
On December 21, 2005, AOL signed and closed a deal to acquire video search startup Truveo Inc. The exact financial figures of the deal were not revealed, but AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham said it was the largest since their $435 million cash acquisition of... More...

Welcome to “The Long Tail”~the Search Marketing
If we took all the movie buffs of the world, grouped them according to favorite movies, and made a graph of the head-count starting from largest to smallest numbers, we would end up with a line gently sloping down from the box-office smashes to contemporary... More...

Yahoo! Publisher Network Gains Momentum
“Based on demand from online publishers, we are opening our Publisher Network to the broader publisher community. Through the expanded platform, we plan to offer unique products and services to publishers of all sizes... More...

Google’s Jagger Update and Analytics Change Search
Google’s newest update, Jagger, has webmasters, online businesses, and SEO companies shaking in their boots. Put Jagger together with Google’s recent Google Analytics, and it seems that search will soon see some sweeping changes that are here to stay.... More...

Google Unveils Free Analytics Service
On Monday, November 14, Google announced that it would make its Web analytics service available to Google account holders for free. Google acquired the San Diego based Urchin Web Analytics in March and has up until recently continued to use the Urchin... More...

Leaked Gates Memo Signals Another “Wave”
It was 1995 when Bill Gates wrote his famous “The Internal Tidal Wave” memo, where he called Microsoft to pay heed to the emerging importance of the Internet. More...

Firefox Gets Good News and Google's Help
Despite three months of sluggish growth, Firefox is back on its merry way to closing in on the Goliath that is Microsoft's Internet Explorer. More...

Microsoft Calling Out Google or Vice Versa?
A couple weeks ago, Google and Sun Microsystems announced an alliance to help promote each other’s products. One of the most vital components of this collaboration was said to be the open source office application, OpenOffice productivity suite... More...

Google: All Your ‘Base’ Are Belong To Us
The Mountain View based company earlier this week unintentionally provided a sneak peek at what appears to be an impending expansion into classified advertising — a move that would have the search engine giant going toe-to-toe with online marketplace eBay More...

Who Owns the Gmail Mark ?
Google Inc., the world's most widely used online search engine with a market cap hovering $90 billion, yesterday bowed to the demands of a British company just a fraction of its size More...

The Latest Digital Media Craze - Podcasts!
Hoping to cash in on the latest digital media craze and to stay ahead of the podcast curve, Yahoo Inc. is introducing tools for searching, organizing, and rating podcasts. Just this past Monday, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company, which... More...

Trends Report - Yahoo! Search Marketing Listing Guidelines Policy Change
The message might have come out a little late yesterday for those covering the industry to pick it up, but almost assuredly, this topic will dominate the industry today. Then again, maybe not. Postings about the topic are scarce, and usually such postings... More...

Google, Lost in Space?
Google and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have joined forces, an unlikely alliance you would think, unless of course Google has already begun preparations for dominating other planets. While one rules the search space... More...

King Google
Google Talk, Gmail, Desktop Search, Toolbar, Orkut, Froogle, the list of free Google services that actually add value to our everyday Internet experience goes on and on. Last week I discussed Google’s maturation from simply a search engine... More...

Google vs. Microsoft
The bitter battle between Internet poster child Google and behemoth Microsoft got even uglier in court recently with Google’s poaching of Kai-Fu Lee, hired to set up a research centre in China. Microsoft claims that Lee, a former vice president... More...

Six Steps to Ensuring Site Visitor Returns
A captivating and successful Pay Per Click affiliate implementation encourages Internet visitors to leave a site through a profitable exit route, while still ensuring they will come back for return visits. Accomplishing this goal means integrating... More...

Is Google ripping us off?
Back in July, I wrote an article about Google's new changes to its AdWords program. The changes were intended to both simplify keyword management as well as give advertisers more control. The AdWords keyword status system was simplified to either... More...