Monthly Archives: June 2005

Remixing Spam

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Jason Dowdell thinks search engine optimization spammers are remix artists.

Using other people’s creative works to produce your own creative work is the essence of remixing. When done right the results are amazing and can be found in all forms of media. From dangermouse to Tarantino, we’re all familiar with the results of good remixes. But I see another form of remixing most people don’t understand and may not agree with me on. I think seo spammers are remix artists of sorts, at least these days anyway.

I agree in part with Jason – content remixing is an art. Take a look at Technorati’s Live 8 page. The page is a great example of content remixing. Blog posts are aggregated to form new content combined with important links. So by remixing other pieces of content, Technorati has created something new and useful. If you search for “live 8″, you’ll notice Technorati’s Live 8 page outranks the Live 8 homepage. Is this SEO spam? Or is this content remixing? Is it the same?

No.

Compare Technorati’s Live 8 page to the many scraper sites. They both generate content dynamically, they both display advertisements, and they both were created to rank well in search engines.

So what’s the difference?

Scraper sites do not create anything for the public – no new value is brought to life through the scraper’s efforts. Content remixers use other people’s works to create a new experience. Scrapers recycle experiences.

Free Search Engine Marketing Advice

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Do you need search engine marketing advice, but you have no budget for a consultant? I’ve got the answer for you.

Well actually, Google has the answer for you.

Google allows you to tap into a vast amount of paid knowledge for free with the Google Answers program. Google’s search engine is a great way to find information online. But sometimes even experienced users need help finding exactly what they are looking for. Google Answers is a quick and easy way to access knowledge from others.

So the next time you need search engine marketing advice, think about giving Google Answers a visit.

Here’s a couple answers I found in Google regarding search engine optimization and search engine marketing:

Review of Yahoo My Web 2.0 Beta

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Yahoo just released My Web 2.0 yesterday and brings a whole new dimension to search.

My Web 2.0 is a social search engine. Yahoo combines the power of search technology and the power of personal networks to deliver a search engine that is based upon your trusted community. Web 2.0 searches your trusted network of contacts for pages that you and your contacts have saved.

With the release of My Web 2.0, Yahoo has added a ton of new features – all based upon community based searching and extending personal networks.

Continue reading →

MSN Explains New Search Operators

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Over on MSN Search Weblog there are explanations of the new search operators.

I like the InBody and Contains operators.

The example they give for finding pages that link to a target page using specific anchor text is totally off though.

inbody:miserable inbody:failure link:www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html

Although this will match text found in the anchor text of links – this matches all body text. So this query actually searches for pages with body text including the words “miserable failure” and links to the president’s bio page. This doesn’t limit the results to only pages with “miserable failure” as outgoing anchor text, so the example is incorrect. Pages with “miserable failure” in the body text can still link to the president’s bio using different anchor text and still be returned in this query.

Microsoft Integrating RSS into Longhorn

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Microsoft announced Friday that they will be integrating several new RSS features in the next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn. The Longhorn Browsing and RSS team also announced a new RSS extension, to be released into Creative Commons, called Simple List Extensions. The extension will allow users to publish a lists as feeds and introduces a change to the RSS specification that many are not too happy about.

RSS functionality in Longhorn will make it easier for users to discover, view, subscribe to RSS feeds, and extend the RSS into more applications – which is a good thing.

Check out the demo video here.

Google Video to Offer Video Playback

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John Battelle reports that Google will offer video playback based on VLC today. Back in April, Google began accepting video uploads. Google will stream all videos tagged as “free” ( submission metadata). The videos will also be searchable by the metadata people provided during submission.

Dirson links to a copy of Google’s accidental post about Google Video.

Update: Google Video playback is live now. Download the viewer first.

Google Planning Pay-Per-Sale Model?

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Here’s what I think Google is building – A pay-per-sale advertising model.

CEO Eric Schmidt has already spoken out and specifically said that Google is not building a PayPal killer, “We do not intend to offer a person-to-person, stored-value payments system…The payment services we are working on are a natural evolution of Google’s existing online products and advertising programs which today connect millions of consumers and advertisers.”

They are working on a service that will extend their current programs and lay the groundwork for something more. Charlene Li believes Google is building a centralized micro payment system – which makes sense. Google would then grow into an open market facilitator. That’s a realistic possibility in the future.

But I think Google’s initial use of a payment system is to add a pay-per-sale model to their current pay-per-click advertising network. Merchants using AdWords to advertise and Google Wallet to process their sales will be able to track which ads lead directly to sales and at what cost. Merchants will be able to tap into the power of large scale affiliate marketing (ala Commission Junction). Publishers can then choose between which model to promote – AdSense for clicks or AdSense for sales.

Continue reading →

Yahoo Testing Behavior Based Ads

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Yahoo, in conjunction with Revenue Science, has been testing its contextual ads on web pages based on user behavior. (via AdWeek)

In contrast to Google’s AdSense, Revenue Science’s technology targets ads to user behavior. By tracking a user’s site behavior, Revenue Science and Yahoo are hoping to attain better results than ads based on page context.

If Yahoo can successfully combine contextual advertising with behavior targeting, they will be offering a better solution for publishers and advertisers – win win for Yahoo and everyone using their advertising network.

Improvements to MSN’s Search Engine

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MSN released several improvements to its search engine this week. (via http://blogs.msdn.com/msnsearch/archive/2005/06/21/431288.aspx)

They’ve added local search, sports instant answers, and new operators.

We’ve added FileType:, one of the most asked for operators, which restricts documents to a particular filetype. InAnchor:, InURL:, InTitle:, and InBody: are now available to find keywords in a particular part of the document, or in anchor text pointing to a document. We’ve augmented the Link: keyword that finds documents that link to a particular page with LinkDomain:, which finds documents that point to any page in a domain. Finally, we’ve added a new experimental operator called Contains:. Contains: returns documents that contain hyperlinks to documents with a particular file extension; for example, contains:wma returns documents that contain a link to a WMA file.

How America Searches

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Some interesting stats from iCrossing and Harris Interactive’s study of US adult search patterns.

  • 93% of all online adults have at least three years of Internet experience.
  • Over half (53%) of all U.S. adults who are online use search engines most or every time they are online.
  • The vast majority of search engine users (88%) say they use search engines to research specific topics.
  • 51% of online adults in the U.S. use search engines for shopping.
  • Of 1,047 adults using search engines for shopping, 80% use it to compare prices.
  • 56% of online adults do not know the difference between natural search engine results and paid search listings.

Marketing Vox has a good summary of the study.