search marketing blog: ambergreen

Answers.com has announced that they have integrated Yahoo! Answers results straight into their content, pulling keyword matches results from the Yahoo! site.

Keyword matches are returned from Answers.com in the usual fashion, with Yahoo! Answers results contained in a right hand box containing related questions and answers from the internet’s largest Q&A site.

With over 60 million users worldwide, Yahoo! answers provides a fantastic supplementary resource for answers.com, with reams of community generated questions and answers on every topic imaginable, and some that aren’t.   According to answers.com the partnership gives users the opportunity to connect reference information with real life experience and enrich the search process.

A search for ‘grapes’ (random, I know, it just popped into my head) returned dictionary, Wikipedia and nutritional information as well as a host of food site results, wine lovers data and various translations, not bad for a one word search.  The Yahoo! Answers box allowed me to view Q&A relating to the types of spiders found in boxes of grapes, substituting sweets for grapes to aid weight loss and The Grapes of Wrath.  Real life experiences indeed, and an interesting addition to some highly relevant search results.

Bob Rosenschein, CEO of Answers.com, explained the deal saying; “The phenomenon of the ‘wisdom of crowds’ has taken on extraordinary momentum, as evidenced by the meteoric growth of Yahoo! Answers.

“While our existing content is incredibly rich, relevant and cross-disciplinary, answers drawn from a community Q&A site provide a flip side - the dynamic, interactive voice of the people. User-generated content is a powerful wave on the internet and is a direction that we will continue to actively pursue.”

Answers.com are moving towards providing a dynamic search experience and as the notion of the online community grows, this can only be of benefit to the search engine.

Internetnews.com has highlighted concerns that using Firefox 2.0s Password Manager function may not be as safe as you would hope.  According to the site the offending bug has been known for nearly a fortnight but remains unpatched, leading to fears that in allowing a malicious page to auto-fill a form, sensitive information could be extracted from the browser.

Security researcher Robert Chapin uncovered the bug on November 12^th, so it looks like Firefox will have to get their skates on to fix this problem before any users are hit hard.

YouTube has seen a flurry of chatter concerning a new profile and its origins. The Supermanreturnsdvd profile seems to have accumulated over 7000 accounts in the course of a week, while few of them seem to have actually viewed the profile’s content. And Supermanreturnsdvd is owned by Time Warner.

Time Warner has recently threatened to sue YouTube for copyright, and now seems to have taken a ‘can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ attitude. However, this has provoked a backlash with comments pouring in opposing Time Warner’s tactics, with many people accusing the company of cheating and taking advantage of users. Not much of a way to build a favourable community around your product.

In the past week the profile amassed 7,500 subscribers, and with only 9 videos in the channel, and less video views than actual subscribers, the intentions behind this profile are clear. Take a look at the video where Time Warner’s actions were first uncovered.

From WebProNews at the Las Vegas PubCon (Tino, should I start planning the ambergreen trip for next year?) comes an interview with Matt Cutts talking about the evolution of search and how search marketing has diversified over the past few years, taking it more towards social media optimisation and the increase in creativity in search.

Matt talks about the next six months, saying that his right hand man will be focusing on tackling European spam problems, as well as focusing on improving communication with their customers.

Get your headphones out!

Google has launched a new sitemaps protocol for Google News for use by publishers, giving greater control over the content Google crawls for inclusion in the Google News network, one of the largest online news distribution sites available. 

Compiling news from more than 4,500 sources, Google News allows users to search the news by keyword or set up alerts based on personal interests.

Publishers currently included in Google News can now use RSS feeds or use a sitemap to direct Google to specific news articles, ensuring that readers get the freshest content available.

Visit Google’s webmaster support for more information on the News Sitemap tool.

MySpace is looking for partners as it prepares to launch MySpace mobiles services in Europe. According to vice president of mobile, Europe, MySpace is focusing on three keys areas of expansion; mobile, video and international.

Mobile internet usage has been slower to take off than expected, with a recent US survey conducted by the Mobile Marketing Association indicated that 31% of respondents used mobile search in the previous month, with users conducting an average nine searches per month.

With sites such as MySpace moving clearly into the mobile internet space, it is likely that uptake will rise, and with 3 billion mobile phones worldwide, the war to win the mobile internet market seems to be hotting up. Mobile operator 3 recently secured partnerships with Google, Skype and eBay among others to provide a range of services to subscribers, who will be able to access MSN instant messaging, eBay auctions, Windows Live Messenger and make free calls to Skype subscribers around the world.

The moves come amid demands from the site’s 130m subscribers. MySpace will not license its brand to mobile operators, but will offer customers MySpace functionality and promote it.

Deals have already been signed in the US with Helio and Cingular to promote the site’s mobile usage across America.

E-consultancy’s compendium of recent web statistics and market data is now available to view in the Library.  The information contained is largely taken from third party sources, and pulls together some fantastic information which might otherwise take hours to find.  Great reading as always.

With Christmas set to see the UK’s 26,000 online shops cope with 25 million shoppers spending in excess of £7 billion, the IMRG has gone on to predict that 2007 will see the online spending boom continue, with internet spending reaching £42 billion, up £30 million on 2006.

A record £2.7 billion was pent online in November 2006, beating the amount spend in December 2005. Experts predict that the total online spend for December will reach £3.5 billion.

These figures have been backed up by research from the Office of National Statistics, which reported a rise in online sales in October contributing to the year’s overall total.

Yahoo has signed a deal with seven US newspaper groups which will see the companies share local news content from 176 daily publications, boosting Yahoo!’s local reach, whilst giving the newspapers the ability to publish classified ads on it’s network of sites, whereby providing them with national exposure.

According to the New York Times the main goal of the deal is the optimisation and inclusion of local news within Yahoo! News, one of the webs most popular online new resources.

In August this year Outsell, the US analyst group warned that US newspaper groups could face a $20 billion shortfall in the next five years as readers stop buying newspaper and switch to finding their news online.

Declining circulation, along with falling revenues in print advertising and the growth of online news outlets would cause huge problems for the industry.

The new deal is expected to offset some of the circulation and advertising revenue problems, and although the newspaper groups’ online ad earnings are not expected to grow fast enough to replace lost print ad revenue, the newspaper business faces an unprecedented transformation which is likely to see increased co-operation between on and offline media channels.

A rather interesting and critical internal memo has appeared out of Yahoo! HQ, supposedly from the pen of Brad Garlinghouse, a Yahoo senior V.P.

It makes some really significant points regarding Yahoo! recent acquisitions, internal politics and staffing, saying that focus must be regained, accountability and clarity of ownership restored and a radical reorganization of the company be undertaken.

No doubt this has put the wind up some employees and share holders, but it can surely only be positive; Yahoo! has bought so many competing companies recently that it is fighting against itself, and according to Garlinghouse key staff have jumped ship leaving behind a mess of bureaucracy, unaccountability and a lack of passion.

It’s all pretty damning stuff and should this be taken to heart, as I’m sure anyone worth their salt in the upper echelons of Yahoo! would feel compelled to do, then we are in for a Yahoo! rather different from the one we know today.

It is the same old story of a company expanding quickly and trying to be all things to all people. At least Garlinghouse has had the guts to tell it like he sees it, no matter how difficult the coming months might be.

What do you think? Straight down the line tough talking or shameless self promotion?