The new Vivísimo baby named... Clusty

One of the good sources to do searches today have been released with the name of Clusty ?!?
He one of the better SE in clustering today, specially with broad subject or for clustering the live of a friend with the exception of the mode cluster ;-)
The major problem I found is to get fresh results. Clusty is using the SE databases of; GigaBlast, MSN, Lycos, Looksmart, Wisenut, Open Directory and Overture. All of thoses take weeks, if not months, to get new sites in theirs index compare to Yahoo and Google.

Spam is not free for spammer, but it is cheap

Interesting study by the Microsoft Research Team about spam and specially the HIP's solution :

Moni Naor suggested using Human Interactive Proofs (HIPs) to combat spam. A HIP is an image that contains distorted letters and numbers. Humans can read the HIP, but a machine cannot. Since spammers rely on machines to send and receive messages without expensive human intervention, if spammers were challenged to read a HIP their machines would fail the test. The Anti-Spam team thought this was a good idea.

"You take Cynthia's idea of using computational puzzles, and you take the idea of using HIPs and you combine that with the machine learning filter. If something comes in that's suspicious, the computer sends a challenge. The challenge says solve this computational puzzle, or solve this Human Interactive Proof," said Goodman.

By giving the user the option to solve a HIP, the user won't have to download special software to solve the computational puzzle or update their legacy computer so that it can handle the computation. They can just read the HIP and send back the answer. Spammers would have to employ and pay a lot of human workers to read HIPs, which would make spamming unprofitable.

"It costs at least .2 cents to pay someone to solve a HIP, compared to the .01 cents spammers currently pay - that's part of the reason we studied spammer costs. This changes their profit model by a factor of 20.

Also that part about the 3 categories of products been promote and how the laws in each country can moderate the spammers :

When the researchers connect this geographic information with what the spammers are selling, they're able to paint a picture of how laws might be successful in stopping spammers.

They grouped the type of products being sold into three categories. Domestic, semi-domestic, and international. Domestic products require a domestic presence. They include financial services, insurance, and items too expensive to ship internationally.

Semi-domestic products require shipping, but the cost is low. These include products such as Viagra, college diplomas, and magazines.

International products or services include those that don't require physical shipping or a domestic presence. They range from software, to porn, to swindles such as the infamous Nigerian scam.

About one-third of the spam was domestic, about a third semi-domestic, and about a third international. "This kind of analysis is really useful" says Goodman. "Given the large amount of domestic and semi-domestic spam, it shows that good laws and prosecutions in the US and neighboring countries can really help. Also, when you see such a large portion of spam that appears to be coming from overseas, you realize there's a need to globally coordinate efforts to address the problem. It also shows us that while laws can be very useful, they won't solve the problem by themselves. We have to keep working on improving the technology and standards too."

Interesting metrics about searches at Google

David Scacco Director of the Vertical Markets Group at Google share interesting data at the Channel Advisor Strategy Summit:

28% of Google searches are for a "product name", 9% are for a "brand name" and 5% are searches for a "company name". "Brand" keywords also have a 8x higher ROI than generic keywords.

Google admits that it can only reach 5% of web page traffic via Google.com and its search partners. With their contextual ad partners, that jumps to 80%.

Via Andy

Yahoo makeover

Yahoo redesign is homepage. Less place to the directory part, more place to the Yahoo services and more customizable. Here a full screen shots of the old Yahoo page :


And the new one more compact and with lot less scrolling :

Yahoo let you find ; office documents, databases, etc

Like the Google filetype:, Yahoo got his instruction to find differents type of files with originurlextension:
Note that it is not all the results who have a mdb extension who are necessarily database.

Google hacking : Photocopiers ?

This article seem hard to believe. I know and I read some article about networked photocopiers who use hard disk to store the latest copy made, but Google can't understand image. How can those IP adress can have a decent ranking in a Google query ?

Yellow pages Canada make a deal with Google

Yellow Pages Canada make a deal with Google to include the business listing in Google Local Canada. It should also work in Google Local because, when you put a canadian city in http://local.google.com it is working too.

I hope Yellow Page will make a clear link to Google Canada Local, because for now, it is hard to find in... Google ;-)

Ask Jeeves will bring the Web search to his second step with MyJeeves

After A9 who give you a history, AskJeeves go a step further with the possibility to save and organize your materiel in sortable folder. For now it save only the tiitle and description, but it should save the entire page in a near future. Also they release today a Local search.
More info on SEW
PS: It is a really good thing for Google that AskJeeves still display sometimes up to 10 sponsored results before the organics results ;-)

Mooglezilla or Gbrowser ?

You remember the post on the Google browser ? The 26 of april Google have registered the domain Gbrowser.com. More information on Jason blog.

I hope they go to register the trademark and make a agreement with them ?

The number one secret of Google : Viral Communication ?

When you saw the launch of Gmail in April 1, releasing some new features on week-end or in holiday to make the geeks blogger (who are usualy pro-google) spread the news before news agency, or seeing some anodyne news like this article where you see about 4 paragraphs on moving service staff outside the United States but still get a new title like "Google making its mark worldwide Firm will have to play catch-up in some key nations" or excerpt title like Google's Global Growth you can tell they get lucky with the press or they got some really good PR peoples in there ?!?

Google add a few mores filetypes parsing

Google can now parse files from Autocad (.dwg and dxf)

Yahoo going in the dating business

Yahoo launch personal for 10 countries! See the tour!

The number of new services from SE is only a beginning !

Overture expanding

Good news for us here in north, Overture will expand in Brazil, Canada, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The french service of Overture was in France and was not really easy to reach for the Quebec customers.

Seem it will be in english and french now for Canada!

Google ban some big SEO company in France

Netbooster, Absolute Référencement, CVFM, Ability Référencement and 1ere Position have see their sites ban from the Google index. Thoses players, like the number one in Europe, Netbooster also been out of Yahoo.
Some of the customers of thoses agencies also get penalized. It will make a huge backlash in the SEO community in Europe.
The reasons I suspect for thoses penalities is huge quantity of doorway keywords overstuff pages generated dynamically by script to reproduce the uncrawlable database of theirs clients and huge cross-linking strategies!

When I discuss of thoses strategies on french forums and with a manager of one those company more than a year ago, they always tell me: It is impossible to do other way, they don't want to change the backend of the site nor to use Url rewriting because "blablabla" and security and "blablabla". My response was always : Tell the customer to call you *before* his next makeover and let them use costly PPC campaign instead!

May be now they will start to educate web agency to stop making uncrawlable site at the place of using bypassing way to get on the SE index.
Via Zdnet France (in french)

Microsoft Research Reorg

With the lead of Eric Brill (I love is funny linking) the new Text Mining Search and Navigation Research is one of the four new research teams with "a new hub for search" focus. Google and Yahoo should keep a eye on thoses guys.

Goog going good

A really nice week plus a history peek ($115.67) for Google!

SearchStatus : A really nice extension of Firefox

Why I love more and more Firefox ? For little extension like SearchStatus !
It use the free space of the status bar in Firefox to display the Google PageRank and the Alexa traffic ranking, and can give you all the backwards links of the main 3 search engines on a simple click, for the page you're browsing!

Microsoft get caught pants down in search engine spamming

Too funny to saw even Microsoft doing that!

A9 seriously challenge Google to innovation

With the new features like; Reference, Bookmark and Diary, the new A9 (no more beta) is a very useful search engine.

With is focus on history, the Alexa data, the new references from Guru net, the bookmark and diary combine with the really smart idea to drag your all the links and title results, from any box (movie, history, reference, etc) to the search box or in your bookmark is making A9 a very good research tool !!!

PS: If A9 can add "site:" automatically when you drag a link to the search box it will be even more useful.

Izito : A new GUI metasearch

Izito was launch today. He use Google, Yahoo, MSN, Altavista, Teoma, Wisenut, AlltheWeb and Kobala (a Nederlands search engine) and use Flash to display and arrange result. His features are :

• Tiling of result in 1, 2 or 3 columns
• Park results for future use
• Add to favorite feature

Cons:

• Problem with diacritics (é,à, etc)
• Same query with different results
• Problem with Firefox viewing the site

Yahoo : After the blog, the music

Yahoo is in growing mode, after the probable development of a blog community there going to acquire Musicmatch.

AskJeeves : Le maître d'hotel in a makeover quest

AskJeeves butler is out for a week to find a way to improve AskJeeves.
Pssst to Jeeves : Just reduce the place taken (and number of) by your sponsored results !

Yahoo going in the Blog business ?

It's looking like that if you read that job description at Yahoo!

Presentation-Layer Web Developer for Yahoo! Communities (Blogs)

Also under an other production manager description :

...you will be responsible for developing and executing a strategy for
our Message Boards, Polls, Ratings, Reviews, and Blogs platforms.

Seem Google/Blogger will face competition !

Via the UnofficialYahooWeblog

It would be a excellent place to test a YahooSense PPC program !

Google News using blog sources

Google News France started to use Blog sources as you can see here:


Will Google News US will follow ?

PS: Yes I know you can see Slashdot on Google News, but it is not really a blog IMO.

Yahoo seem to going again in the electronic business line

After the big flop of the Yahoo! Digital camera, it seem Yahoo gonna make a new try in DVD, TV LCD screens and Home Theater System!

Surprising news about Google

Fidelity Investments have 15.5% of Google Class A common stock !

Browse by name in Firefox

You're jealous of the new Google Toolbar feature browse by name ? No problemo ! Try it after with : worst president ever ;-)

Another horror story

Why they don't make search on the name of the SEO company before to go with them ?

The decline of ethical SEO and the new lure on profit only business of that market

When I read something like that from Batelle I'm a bit scary of the educational part of what SEO should be:

The point is, whoever joins SEMPO, agrees to act by some basic fair play rules. That's not policing, that's common sense. It'll be good for the industry, good for SEMPO, and good for search.

I saw Sempo last year for the first time and I was really shock when I saw the front page! My first thought was : Is that organisation really want to promote fair value of SEO and SEM with the first right column full of sponsors and the right one with a huge list of SEO companies links where I know a few one over the years using some discusting techniques to get good ranking ? Ok, don't get mad on your first impression and dig a bit more. But after looking; the articles, editorial and case studies I was not very more and more sceptical. Specially with the last one :

Traffic jumped 12,833% in 12 months...
... the site currently handles over 1500 unique visitors per day.

Did I read 12,833% and now 1,500 visitors per day ? If you go see Web Archive it seem impossible that site got only 0,0085 visitor by day before ? That's less than 1 visitor a week ? One of my customer get 3,500 visitors by day since three years selling only men's underwear! Not flowers where we should buying more than twice a year if we won't pay lawyers for divorce ;-)

The final page of Sempo who convinced me to pass by was this one, the Join US page.
First thing you see there : Links from SEMPO Home Page
Second : How many line you got in description and howe many external links and logo
Third : Right to use SEMPO logo
Forth : Advertising opportunities
Fifth : Burk! I'm sick reading that shit who was supposed to promote ethical SEO and rehabilitate the SEM/SEO industry

The good news today is after Mike Grehan publish his story last month, Danny and Chris resign from the board of Sempo.

A good move !

Open WorldCat Pilot Project : Yahoo beat Google by far

Goal of the project : Make libraries more visible to Web users and more accessible from the sites where many people begin to look for information.

WorldCat project from the OCLC(Online Computer Library Center) is to envolve search engines to crawl the database of WorldCat to make it easier to find where, on the 9,000 libraries Worlwide, you can find your book with a simple query in a search engine.

The project start with Google at the beginning of the year and with Yahoo in may.

Google results : Less than 300,000 library records today from near 500,000 in the 8 of july ???

Yahoo results : Yahoo have 4 millions records and give to your book title search a better position in the ranking compare to Google.

A new ResourceShelf source: DocuTicker

Nice new repository source for online; studies, research reports, issue briefs and papers of all sorts like;

• Governement initiatives on open-source software,
• Sierra Club article with How the Bush Administration Is Eroding Coastal Protection and
• from the Government Accountability Office : Data Inconclusive on Effects of Shift to Counterterrorism-Related Priorities.

Nice work from Shirl Kennedy, Steven M. Cohen and Gary Price with a easy to find XML/RSS feed ;-)

MoveOn recap: Google: 1 Yahoo: 0

Two weeks after the first article, Google have remove all the cached pages and exposed URL while Yahoo have done nothing!!!
Update 5 sept. : Almost nothing???

Funny coincidence !?!

Four day ago.... and today !

MIT Technology on MoreGoogle ?

The MIT Technology have put up a story on MoreGoogle! Weird article research from this institution !

What is MoreGoogle ?

This Add-on for Internet Explorer give you Google search results via a API from Google, and with thumbnail view from the site and links to traffic rankings via Alexa. Here all is ok!

The catch

But when you search for a product, it's show you Amazon price information and users rating. Well, that's good you say ! That right! But if you go to Amazon and buy the product, the guy at MoreGoogle receive a commission!!!

From the MoreGoogle site:
How are you affiliated with Amazon.com?

I am an Amazon.com associate. Amazon Associates drive internet traffic to Amazon.com through specially formatted links and earn up to 10% in referral fees on all qualifying revenue made through their links.

When you use MoreGoogle and click on an Amazon.com result, you support me and MoreGoogle if you actually purchase a product.

I think this is a clear violation of the Google API !?!

The Google Web APIs service is made available to you for your personal, non-commercial use only (at home or at work).

But the guy is kind, he is splitting half and half with you, if you are a Amazon associate!

Ultrabar launch Firefox toolbars

The maker of Ultrabar for IE have release a set of toolbars for Firefox. The one with Technocrati can be useful to know if the site you're visiting is well known. You can also get one for; Blogger, Blogline, Typepad and LiveJournal. Where is WordPress?

Flash and SEO : No (more) problemo !?!

I was never a fan of Flash because the resulting SWF files won't get crawled by search engine's robots. But the graphist and artistic director always love Flash. That's why the artistic's guy was not my favorite friends in my work. But this can change soon.

Do you know Shaun Inman ?

Until today, me too! But that guy invented a technique to 'Un-embed' Flash in a Html page. Wow!

He wrote his pages out as standard XHTML and then used javascript and the Document Object Model to replace all designated text with Flash-rendered text a split second after the page had loaded. Known as IFR, or Inman Flash Replacement, this method was rightly praised by the web community for enabling rich typography without affecting any underlying XHTML code. The method had many revolutionary features and only a few shortcomings, the most glaring of which was the lack of support for multiple lines of text.

But Mike Davidson improve those innovations and now you can have multiple lines of text. Are we gonna see long movie soon ? Not yet, but thoses techniques improve rapidly !

Domain name protection : A lesson from China

Amusing to see that article. Not the fact that China have always control the net. Just because here, in Canada, only one have is domain name registred by a relation firm, all the other olympic winners domain name are available in .ca or .com!
Here the name I check; lori-ann-muenzer, tonya-verbeek, karen-cockburn, emilie-heymans, adam-van-koeverden, caroline-brunet, marie-helene-premont, tonya-verbeek, kyle-shewfelt, blythe-hartley, mike-wolfs and ross-macdonald