SearchNewz / Top Story

Does Google Need An Ethics Policy Like The New York Times?
Google has a paid link dilemma, at least according to Patrick Altoft (tip of the hat to Lee Messenger). As he says: The reason Google doesnt like paid links is obvious and understandable from their point of view. Google quite simply doesnt want websites to be able to buy their way to the top of the search engine rankings.
Directory: > Top Story > News
Date: 2008-05-09

Visual search with SearchMe
Do away with boring text search and see what youre looking for. Thats the thrust of visual search from SearchMe, a startup search engine currently in public beta that offers you something a bit different, and visually more attractive, in your online searching. The company has been around for some years.
Directory: > Top Story > News
Date: 2008-05-08

Yahoo Makes the World a Safer Place
Yep, Yahoo working to make the world a safer place"to search. Yahoo will now display warnings on SERPs to indicate that some of the sites listed in their results may not be entirely safe. Yahoos SearchScan feature will be a new default for SERPs served to the US, Canada, the UK, France, Italy...
Directory: > Top Story > News
Date: 2008-05-07

Yahoo! Shares take a Dramatic Plunge as Microsoft withdraws Bid!
Yahoo! Successfully avoided the jaws of Microsoft, but found itself drowning in the share market. Microsoft had to withdraw its takeover bid for Yahoo! as the latter had asked for a higher price of $37 a share against Microsoft's final bid of $33 a share. But this deterrence didn't give Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang any opportunity to smile.
Directory: > Top Story > News
Date: 2008-05-06

Microsoft Backs Down from Yahoo
The web is afire with the news that after its latest bid attempt to takeover Yahoo failed, Microsoft decided to back down. My desktop news widget is going wild with this news... updating every 30s or so with more updates from Wall Street Journal, CNN Money, Forbes, Information Week, CNet News, etc; hot news indeed.
Directory: > Top Story > News
Date: 2008-05-05

Google TV Ads Expands. Reaches out to all U.S. Advertisers.
Google has introduced a unique all-digital with the sole purpose of helping advertisers buy more accountable and measurable TV advertisements more easily, efficiently. According to the Google Blog, this program had been in Beta Test Phase and also in 'Invitation Only Mode' since its initiation...
Directory: > Top Story > News
Date: 2008-05-02

Microsoft Applies Another Update to Live Product Search- MSN on the Fastrack!
Continuing from the last update that Microsoft had applied to Live Search Products last week, yet another critical update has been patched into its Live Search Products Service. According to the Live Search Blog, the users would be able to perform research and find suitable deals on the products displayed within Live Search.
Directory: > Top Story > News
Date: 2008-05-01

Google AdWords Displaying Quality Score Variables
Reports are surfacing today that some Google AdWords ads, especially on Google.de (their German TLD), are displaying what may be variables used in determining quality scores: Pscore, mCPC and thresh. The numerical values have been spotted in both sidebar and shaded results:
Directory: > Top Story > News
Date: 2008-04-30

Google Discovers Holy Grail of Image Search, But Will it Scale?
Google has a lofty ambition when it comes to image search. The worlds largest search engine hopes to do for image search what it did for regular text search"make it a whole lot more reliable. How it plans to do this is outlined in a new research paper written by two Google scientists. According to the NYT:
Directory: > Top Story > News
Date: 2008-04-29

Google's AdWords URLs Doing Somersaults! Another 'Test' In Progress?
These days, it seems that Google has become more of a 'Chemistry' oriented company. Especially, due their frequent 'Trial & Error' methodology while performing tests its SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). There is a change that has been reported in Google AdWord advertisements.
Directory: > Top Story > News
Date: 2008-04-28

Yahoo! Launches SearchMonkey!
Yahoo! has unveiled an open-source tool that would benefit both the users and publishers alike as they would be able to increase the search results in context to a particular website. This open source tool known as SearchMonkey will give the publishers the possibility of enhancing their search results on Yahoo!...
Directory: > Top Story > News
Date: 2008-04-25

SEO Tip: Google Sitelinks = Clue To Authority Status?
Some interesting food for thought in your site planning efforts. Ive been looking into this issue for some time, and noticed some trends in the results Google shows. So traffic weightage plays a part in the display of sitelinks. For Andrew Wee from a Singapore IP, heres the result:
Directory: > Top Story > News
Date: 2008-04-24

Yahoo's First Quarter Results Beat Expectations: Will Microsoft Back-out?
The much awaited financial results for Yahoo's first quarter ending on March 31st 2008 have been announced. According to Yahoo! , the revenues for the first quarter of 2008 have been at $1,818 Million, which is a 9% increase compared to $1,672 million for the first quarter financial results of 2007.
Directory: > Top Story > News
Date: 2008-04-23

SE Workshops Now Offering Online SEM Resource Center
Search Engine Academy is now offering a networking community for search engine marketers. This new networking community is the first on the internet to offer a place where search engine optimizers can meet and share strategies, access other online areas, and get the latest updated material on a regular basis.
Directory: > Top Story > News
Date: 2008-04-22

Google, Comscore and AdGooroo: Reconciling the Differences
The past few months have been a roller coaster ride for Googles stock price. The main culprit was a series of Comscore reports, starting in January, that implied Google search volume was heading south. Many analysts interpreted this to mean Googles Q1 2008 revenue from paid ad clicks would be disappointing.
Directory: > Top Story > News
Date: 2008-04-21

Yahoo! & Google Test Successful. A Giant Leap for Y!
Wall Street Journal has reported that Yahoo! Inc, and Google have got closer to a partnership deal after the successful testing of Google advertisements in Yahoo! SERPS (Search Engine Result Page). On April 10th 2008, we had reported to our readers that Yahoo! was going to test Google's ads in its SERPS.
Directory: > Top Story > News
Date: 2008-04-18

Google Website Optimizer: All Grown Up
Googles Website Optimizer has reached a milestone that most launches today dont: it left beta. Not only that, but its also launching as an independent product, according to the Google Analytics Blog. What does it mean to get spun out in the Google product family?
Directory: > Top Story > News
Date: 2008-04-17

Move over Google Analytics here comes Yahoo!
I am sure a lot of you heard last week that Yahoo got into the analytics field with purchase of IndexTools. At that time it was not clear if Yahoo will continue selling IndexTools for a fee or will give away the tool for free like Google Analytics and Microsoft Analytics (Gatineau or what ever they are calling it these days).
Directory: > Top Story > News
Date: 2008-04-16

Yahoo Running Out of Time with Microsoft
If the Yahoo/Microsoft deal is to going happen at all, analysts think that itll happen this week, according to CNET. Despite having rejected the initial offer long ago, Yahoo is still feeling the pressure for several reasons. Two deadlines are looming for Yahoo: Q1 reporting and Microsofts latest ultimatum deadline.
Directory: > Top Story > News
Date: 2008-04-15

Google & Salesforce.com Lovefest
Why doesnt Google just go ahead an make an honest woman out of Salesforce.com? After announcing a pretty significant commitment to each other last June, the two are back with another announcement. According to the announcement, Google and Salesforce.com
Directory: > Top Story > News
Date: 2008-04-14

MixUp at Google? URLs and Page Titles Being Mixed Up
It seems like Google is facing difficulties in mapping URLs and the pages associated to those URLs. According to Webmaster World , titles and URLs from the same domain are being mixed up in the Google SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). It has also been observed that in many searches...
Directory: > Top Story > News
Date: 2008-04-11

Yahoo Giving Into MS... I Mean Google
Well Yahoo was probably going to have to bow to someone soon. We all thought it would be MSN and it eventually still could be. MSN seems to have their laser beam locked on Yahoo now. In the mean time Yahoo made an interesting announcement. Yahoo! Inc., a leading global Internet company...
Directory: > Top Story > News
Date: 2008-04-10

Google Huddle Chat Taken Down
Just two days after the release, Google removed their main sample application for the new Google App Engine. HuddleChat.com is now showing the following message: Hi, a couple of our colleagues wrote Huddle Chat in their spare time as a sample application for other developers to demonstrate...
Directory: > Top Story > News
Date: 2008-04-09

Yahoo! Refuses To Bow To Microsoft's Deadline Threat!
Yahoo! Inc. rejected software giant Microsoft's three week deadline to accept a $44.6 billion takeover bid, keeping the prospect of a higher bid wide open. Roy Bostock (chairman of Yahoo's board) said, "We continue to believe that your proposal is not in the best interests of Yahoo! and our stockholders."
Directory: > Top Story > News
Date: 2008-04-08

Yahoo! Reveals AMP Advertising Platform for Publisher
In an effort to increase the sales of graphical and premium advertisements, Yahoo! revealed the details of its new Advertising Management Platform or AMP. The project that is still in the developmental stages will enable Yahoo's publishing partners to place advertisements on their own sites as well as on Yahoo!.
Directory: > Top Story > News
Date: 2008-04-07