Froogle Search: manchester airport flights airlines guide

Froogle Search:
From; 'searchenginejournal@yahoogroups.com' "I don't know if it helps the searchengine visibility, but it can't hurt. I know that when someone does a search, Froogle will only display 1 listing from each vendor in the results, but customers can see more listings for a certain vendor by clicking a 'more listings' link under each image. My company has been in Froogle almost since its inception, and the only challenge we've experienced is that no one really has any control over WHICH products are displayed for a particular search.

Slashdot | Google Finally Moves Toward RSS Standard

Slashdot | Google Finally Moves Toward RSS Standard:
Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday June 10, @05:19PM
from the i-miss-ultramode dept.
declan writes 'My News.com colleague Evan Hansen just got his hands on an internal email thread revealing that Google is planning to embrace RSS. Evan's co-authored News.com article quotes from the email (sent to Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt) confirming that Google is rethinking only supporting Atom. "

China & Google purchases

Instant Position Search Engine Marketing Forums: "Google has been trying to go strong in China for some time, with lots of problems.

Now they are going for a different strategy:

'Now, Google is making an investment in one of China's largest search engines, Baidu, which means ``hundred times.'' Google won't comment, but the investment was confirmed by U.S. investor Tim Draper of Menlo Park's Draper Fisher Jurvetson, which invested $10 million in Baidu. The move might give Google a way to secure its position in China and gain leverage over its chief competitor there.'

Full story: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/technology/8867532.htm?1c "

Yahoo tests new home page | CNET News.com

Yahoo tests new home page | CNET News.com: "Yahoo has begun quietly testing a makeover of its home page, as evidenced by trial mock-ups seen by some Web users over the past few weeks when they accessed the portal... Yahoo's home page changes are few and far between. The company has long remained militant about maintaining the site's speedy load time and visual style, resisting a heavy use of graphics and animation. Before its 2002 makeover, Yahoo's home page had maintained its basic framework since 1995. "

Yahoo email: The e-mail revamp, slated to launch this summer, will include a boost in memory to 100MB for free users and "virtually unlimited" storage for its paid customers. The move is meant to counter archrival Google, which plans to launch a free e-mail service called Gmail that offers 1GB of storage.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Inside the Google search machine

BBC NEWS | Technology | Inside the Google search machine: "Google used to update its web index every month which, because it caused results to jump around a little, was dubbed the Google Dance. But not anymore, says Mr Cutts.
'Within the last year we have improved out way of processing and indexing the web,' he says. 'You are not going to see Google dances.' 'Now we crawl a percentage of the web everyday,' he says, 'so after a relatively small time frame we hit every page.' "

Google Gains Overall, Competition Builds Niches

Google Gains Overall, Competition Builds Niches: "Hitwise placing Google at the top for search in April 2004, with Yahoo! as the number one portal. Google registered more than a 21 percent gain in market share from August 2003 to April 2004, while Yahoo!'s search engine lost nearly 1 full percentage point, and MSN's search function registered a nearly 9 percent decrease in market share during the same period. "

Just as an iProspect study revealed that searchers viewed results differently across the top search engines, Hitwise also found differentiators among the top three search applications. MSN Search had the highest percentage of U.S visits from the sites Hitwise categorized as Shopping and Classifieds; Business and Finance; and Travel, while Yahoo! Search and Google received more U.S. visits from the sites in the Education; News and Media; and Entertainment categories.

Women found paid ads to be more relevant than the men did when searching across Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and AOL. College graduates and Internet veterans found organic results to be more relevant than their non-graduate and Internet novice counterparts.

Demographically, Hitwise found that Google was the preferred search tool for males, while MSN Search appealed to females. Yahoo! was the more popular engine for 18 to 34 year-old searchers, and MSN Search captured the over 55 crowd

google primer - if anyone out there hasnt a clue how it works still

Google: World's Best Search Engine?:
Evaluating Results

Google's web-page-ranking system, PageRank, tends to give priority to better-respected and trusted information. Well-respected sites link to other well-respected sites. This linking boosts the PageRank of high-quality sites. Consequently, more accurate pages are typically listed before sites that include unreliable and erroneous material. Nevertheless, evaluate carefully whatever you find on the web since anyone can:

Create pages
Exchange ideas
Copy, falsify, or omit information intentionally or accidentally
Many people publish pages to get you to buy something or accept a point of view. Google makes no effort to discover or eliminate unreliable and erroneous material. It's up to you to cultivate the habit of healthy skepticism. When evaluating the credibility of a page, consider the following AAOCC (Authority, Accuracy, Objectivity, Currency, and Coverage) criteria and questions, which are adapted from www.lib.berkeley.edu/ENGI/eval-criteria1001.html.

Authority

Who are the authors? Are they qualified? Are they credible?
With whom are they affiliated? Do their affiliations affect their credibility?
Who is the publisher? What is the publisher's reputation?
Accuracy

Is the information accurate? Is it reliable and error-free?
Are the interpretations and implications reasonable?
Is there evidence to support conclusions? Is the evidence verifiable?
Do the authors properly list their sources, references or citations with dates, page numbers or web addresses, etc.?
Objectivity

What is the purpose? What do the authors want to accomplish?
Does this purpose affect the presentation?
Is there an implicit or explicit bias?
Is the information fact, opinion, spoof, or satirical?
Currency

Is the information current? Is it still valid?
When was the site last updated?
Is the site well maintained? Are there any broken links?
Coverage

Is the information relevant to your topic and assignment?
What is the intended audience?
Is the material presented at an appropriate level?
Is the information complete? Is it unique?

GMAIL & PRIVACY LEGISLATION

Wired News: Tightening the Reins on Gmail: "California's Senate voted on Thursday to support a bill to limit a new e-mail service by No. 1 Web search company, Google, over concerns it could threaten the privacy of users. "

Froogle nuts & bolts

Questions for Froogle's Mastermind, Part 1: "Questions for Froogle's Mastermind, Part 1"

Froogle is Google's shopping search engine.

Rated very user-friendly shopping experience

Users can view search results in a list or a grid format

List view gives the product photo, product name, price, description, and link are displayed in each search result
Grid view appears with only one click & shows more product photos on one screen.
Search results can be sorted from low-to-high or high-to-low prices & you can set a price range

Nevill-Manning (CNM) : Our two overriding aims in developing Froogle are comprehensiveness and ranking quality... Froogle uses the same business model as Google -- no money changes hands in order to appear in the results, and we sell clearly marked ads on the side of the page.

Other shopping search engines have a quandary: If they charge merchants to be involved, then they can't be comprehensive. If they include others at no charge, they remove the incentive to pay for inclusion. If they take a middle road -- show the paid results first, then the unpaid results -- then relevancy suffers. With Froogle, we give away lots of valuable traffic to merchants for free but end up with a higher-quality user experience...

Ranking is done using a function that is based on the Google ranking but is tuned especially for Froogle, making use of the structured data that is unique to Froogle: name, description, price, image, etc.

Apart from comprehensiveness and ranking quality, we apply the Google formula of a simple user interface and fast response times...CNM: We have no plans to move either Google or Froogle to a paid inclusion model, for the reasons I outlined above. If you provide users with the best possible experience, it's possible to monetize it with clearly marked, highly relevant ads.


ST: Why do some Froogle search results show above Web page matches on Google?

CNM: For a fairly small subset of queries that we strongly believe indicate users are looking to purchase a product, we show three results above the Web results. They are intended to help people get the information they need as quickly as possible -- just as we show results from News or Local Search if we detect that it might be helpful.

CNM: We have a long list of features that we'd like to add to Froogle, but we'd like it to be a surprise.

India's Secret Army of Ad Clickers - Rupees for Clicks

SecurityForumX :: View topic - India's Secret Army of Ad Clickers - Rupees for Clicks: "Since the introduction of Google Ads and various other 'pay for click' advertising schemes, I have been saying that it was open to abuse and that advertisers that 'pay for clicks' are probably 'paying to support some family in India and not attracting real clients or potential customers...'.

Here is a nice little story out of The Times of India that helps explain why advertisers are getting RIPPED OFF by these ' pay for click schemes '.

Quote:


India's Secret Army of Ad Clickers
The Times Of India:

With her baby on her lap, Maya Sharma (name changed) gets down to work every evening from her eighth-floor flat at Vasant Vihar. Maya's job is to click on online advertisements. She doesn't care about the ads, but diligently keeps count � it's $0.18 to $0.25 per click.

A growing number of housewives, college graduates, and even working professionals across metropolitan cities are rushing to click paid Internet ads to make $100 to $200 (up to Rs 9,000) per month.

'It's boring, but it is extra money for a couple of hours of clicking weblinks every day,' says a resident of Delhi's Patparganj, who has kept a $300-target for the summer.

Traffic to click overseas Internet ads � from home loans to insurance � is spreading fast in India. 'I have no interest in what appears when clicking an ad. I care only whether to pause 60 seconds or 90 seconds, as money is credited if you stay online for a fixed time,' says another user.

Here's how it works: online advertisers in developed markets agree to pay hosting website each time an ad is clicked. With performance-based deals becoming dominant on the Internet, intermediaries have sprung up"

Google moves toward clash with Microsoft | CNET News.com

Google moves toward clash with Microsoft | CNET News.com: "Edging closer to a direct confrontation with Microsoft, Google is preparing to introduce a powerful file and text software search tool for locating information stored on personal computers. "

Google Guide: Table of Contents

Essential websiite for anyone strating out optimising for google...Google Guide: Table of ContentsPart II:
Understanding Results

• How Google Works
• Results Page
• Links Included with Your Results
• Spelling Corrections (Suggestions)
• Definitions
• Cached Pages
• Similar Pages

Google Corporate Information: Software Principles

Very timely as my Yahoo! toolbar was hijacked yesterday by Mysearch...

Google Corporate Information: Software Principles: "Feedback requested: A proposal to help fight deceptive Internet software
Send your feedback to software-principles@google.com."

Discussion: Slashdot | Google's Software PrinciplesGoogle has just posted a new set of "Software Principles"at their [1]site on how they feel about spyware and the like. It is interesting to see the company whose motto is "Do no evil" trying to get the rest of the internet world to follow, with proposed principles dealing with upfront installation, clear behavior, simple removal, and keeping good company. The question is, though - why would a company who makes spyware (whose very nature is to be secretive and hard to remove) want to follow Google's principles?"

The Definitive Guide to Google AdWords - Action form

The Definitive Guide to Google AdWords - Action form: "Perry Marshall's Definitive Guide to Google AdWords"

Geico sues Google, Overture over trademarks | CNET News.com

Geico sues Google, Overture over trademarks | CNET News.com: "Auto insurance company Geico has sued Google and Overture Services for allegedly violating its trademarks in search-related advertisements, in the latest legal salvo against the Internet companies.
Geico, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company owned by Warren Buffett, filed suit against Google and Yahoo-owned Overture on May 4, in federal court in Alexandria, Va.
The insurer charged the two companies with infringing on its trademarks when they sold them as keywords to Geico's rivals, so that the protected terms could appear in sponsored search results. According to the suit, that practice causes consumer confusion, in violation of the Lanham Act, the primary federal law covering trademark registration and protection. "

Google Search: totaltravel.com -site:www.totaltravel.com

Google Search: totaltravel.com -site:www.totaltravel.com: "Results 1 - 10 of about 47,600 for totaltravel.com -site:www.totaltravel.com."

Google would not display all the links it knows linking to your website. While the exact criterion of display is not published, generally we have seen that Google displays links from web pages having a PR of 4 and above. Please rest assured that even though Google may display a lesser number
of links pointing to your site, you will get benefit from all the links Google has learned as long as they have a positive PR (i.e. PR > 0).

While there is no accurate command to find out all the sites linking to you, the following command will give you a bigger list of sites who are possibly linking to you:

yoursite.com -site:www.yoursite.com

The above syntax instructs Google to show all the pages that have the word "yoursite.com" without showing pages from your own site. While it will list a lot more sites than their standard link command does, the flaw in the above command is that all pages that mention your site name may not necessarily be linking to you. There are also instances where it shows up pages where an email address containing 'yoursite.com' is listed on the page.

Despite its shortcoming, this syntax is a good way to evaluate approximately the number of sites linking to you. Notice that in the above command the www is omitted in the first part, because sometimes sites link to your domain name without including 'www' in the text

Cre8asite forums. Google - New Sites Put Into a "Sand Box" by Google. [ Search Engine Optimization, Usability and Web Design. ]

Cre8asite forums. Google - New Sites Put Into a "Sand Box" by Google. [ Search Engine Optimization, Usability and Web Design. ]: It appears that Google is holding out on new domain names for a 2 - 4 month period of time. So a new domain name might rank very well a few weeks after the site is launched, but soon after it will get bumped down in the results for a 2 - 4 mont period for no apparent reason.

5 Days to Success with Google AdWords

5 Days to Success with Google AdWords:

"The price you bid is almost never the price you actually pay. You almost always pay less. First, it's a little bit like Ebay: You pay 1 cent above the position below you, not the maximum that you bid"

Your Click Thru Rate (CTR) is MORE important than how much you bid.

The Click Thru Rate is the percentage of people searching who click. If 100 people search, your ad shows up 100 times, and one person clicks through, that's a 1% click thru rate.

So let's say I've got a 1% CTR and I'm paying $1.00 for position #2. Let's say you've got a 2% CTR --- you only have to pay 51 cents to get position #2 and knock me down to position #3. That means if you're 2 times as relevant, you pay 1/2 as much!

Here's an example of two ads - one got nearly twice the CTR as the other:

Simple Self Defense
For Ordinary People
Easy Personal Protection Training
www.tftgroup.com
Clickthrough Rate: 0.8%

Simple Self Defense
For Ordinary People
Fast Personal Protection Training
www.tftgroup.com
Clickthrough Rate: 1.3%

Notice what happened: Only ONE word changed - "Fast" instead of "Easy" - and the Click Thru Rate jumped from 0.8% to 1.3%. That means that the ad on the right gets almost twice as much traffic for the same amount of money.

NB Google ranks your ad higher as your CTR goes up. Overture does not do this. In Overture, the highest bidder always wins. That rewards people who have more money than brains. Which means that for the smart marketer, Google is vastly superior....

BW Online | May 17, 2004 | Just How Different Is Google?

BW Online | May 17, 2004 | Just How Different Is Google?: "if you look closely at the areas that matter in any company's operations and personality -- the dissemination of power and money -- you discover that Google isn't really different from many other tightly-run and successful emerging businesses. It is at once highly controlling and focused.

THE BOTTOM LINE. How do they run the company? The simple answer is that they seem to run a tight ship. Larry and Sergey each made a base salary last year of $150,000, with $206,000 in bonuses. And they were smart enough to pay Eric Schmidt, the CEO, more than themselves -- $250,000 of base salary, plus a $301,000 bonus. For a company with nearly $1 billion of revenue last year, the executive compensation is quite modest. Equally impressive is that directors haven't been receiving cash compensation. Yes, the stock they received in the past is now quite valuable, but it wasn't always that way.

Perhaps most impressive is one statistic that hasn't received a great deal of attention: last year's $961.9 million of revenue, when apportioned among Google's 1,907 employees, translates into more than $500,000 revenue per employee. That is a hefty number for a young fast-growing company -- a number likely to grow substantially as the company cashes in further on its dominance of online information retrieval. "

Google to Give New Advertisers Jumpstart

For the UK?? Google to Give New Advertisers Jumpstart: "Google is angling for new AdWords advertisers with the promise of a helping hand for those who open new accounts and make a $299 pre-payment.
Marketers participating in the new offering, called Jumpstart, have Google 'specialists' assigned to write ads, choose relevant keywords, and set cost-per-click amounts -- within a specified budget -- designed to maximize ad exposure. Google laid out the terms of the program on its Web site, although it hasn't yet been officially announced.

Though Google offers larger advertisers and publishers assistance with its AdWords and AdSense programs, this is its first major service initiative designed for smaller advertisers. It's not clear how many staffers will be assigned to the new offering. Google didn't respond to requests for comment by press time

The search company has been testing technologies designed to parse Web sites for appropriate keywords, according to search engine marketers. That technology, along with a service team, is apparently being deployed in this new offering.

Those interested in participating in Jumpstart fill out an application, confirm their e-mail addresses, and wait two to five business days for their Web site to be reviewed and a campaign created. Then, they review the campaign and activate it. Google encourages advertisers to handle further tweaks and optimization themselves, though it also says it will respond to customer service requests in one business day."