Eastline Marketing S.A.L.

Yesterday Google announced on its official blog that by next week they would be graduating the Google Suggest tool from their Labs to their home page. This service proposes in the form of a drop down suggestions of words while you are typing your query. Google Suggest, which has existed since late 2004 has three main goals:

1- Help to formulate queries by suggesting complementary primary keywords:

2- Reduce spelling mistakes by automatically suggesting corrected keywords:

3- Saving keystrokes. While you're typing, Google Suggest fills in automatically possible keywords:

The only thing Google doesn't suggest is if this function can be de-activated manually by the user!

Sources:

- http://labs.google.com/suggestfaq.html
- http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/at-loss-for-words.html

adCenter, the link supply sponsored by Microsoft, now offers an Excel 2007 "add-in" to search for keywords (the tool is only compatible with this version of Excel). It allows you to create and manage lists of keywords, to add filters on the relevance, the cost, the volume, demographics, the geographical locations, etc. Past, current, and predictive data are also provided.

Sources:

- http://advertising.microsoft.com/search-advertising/adcenter_addin

Google has announced that he would in the weeks ahead explain more thoroughly than today why, given several criteria, the results page of its search engine has been customized.

Thus, this message will soon be displayed at the result of a search:

Clicking on the "More Details" link will permit the user to know why and on which base the results have been personalized: Identification and IP geo-targeting, previous search result analysis, previous visited web sites, etc.

For the moment, these features don't seem to appear in the Middle-East region Google versions, though it is surely only a question of day...

Sources:

- http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/more-transparency-in-customized-search.html

In December 2005, Live Search launched a localized version of its search engine, a kind of mixed Google Maps and Microsoft. Among other just added features, they allow any professional to add his address, phone number, geographical location as well as comments and opinions about customers.

The tool, called Live Local Listing Center, will provide a complete description of the real estate, its inclusion in a business category, and to publish it online after verification.

The project was announced in December 2007. Knol, the collaborative encyclopaedia - on the model of Wikipedia - was officially launched yesterday by Google. The difference, compared to Wikipedia, is pushing subject-expert authors (currently online are mostly health related issues), who publish an article on a topic, article which can be noted and commented upon by the community, but its author can decide if it can be amended by a third person or not. If an author agrees to put in place advertisements around its subject, he will receive a percentage. Google has also signed an agreement with the New Yorker magazine that gives authors the option to add a cartoon by article.

Welcome to this new tool, whose future will tell whether its business model is complementary or a competitor to that of Wikipedia...

Sources:

- http://knol.google.com/
- http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/knol-is-open-to-everyone.html

Google has signed an agreement with the Russian company Rambler Media to acquire ZAO Begun, which specializes in contextual advertising, amounting to $ 140 million. Rambler holds 50.1% of Begun but will buy the remaining 49.9% to the company Bannatyne before selling it to Google.

Rambler will also use the search technology and Google advertisements on its site. Note that Google is not the leader in Russia where Yandex is the number one player now, which is one reason that drives Google to better penetrate the territory where Begun manages 40 000 advertisers portfolio and a network of 143 000 websites.

Sources:

- http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/20080718_begun.html
- http://www.ramblermedia.com/objfiles/i8366A9B8/080717_Begun_Transaction_Final.pdf [pdf]

According to Reuters, Time Warner is in negotiations with Yahoo! and Microsoft regarding the sale of AOL. A decision could be announced by the end of July.

The market is not neutral in terms of information search on the Web since AOL uses Google's "search" technology and is one of its major customers. A takeover by either of the two companies would certainly undermine the contract between AOL to Google ... Let's Wait and see ...

Sources:

http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSWEN670820080716?feedType=RSS&feedName=internetNews&sp=true

Around the end of last year, Google had started testing a Digg-like tool enabling the user to modify the order of the search results. Google is renewing this experience with a system named "Edit Search Results" enabling the user to modify the order (moving upward or downward) of search results through the icon , delete results using the icon , suggest a link that does not appear in the results, or insert a comment () that would only appear to the user having added this comment.

It's important to note that these functionalities are also available for example in the latest version of Wikia Search. For the moment, on Google, only a selected number of users will be given the possibility to use these functionalities since it is still under the testing phase.

Sources:

- http://www.google.com/support/faqs/?editresults
- http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/14/google-bucket-testing-new-digg-like-search-interface/

Many of you have already heard about Google Webmaster Tools, an administration interface that enables webmasters to obtain various information about how Google's robots and search engine sees their website.

In the same spirit, Google announced a new version of this interface that they have been testing since November 2007 with Go Daddy. This offer enables access providers to provide a co-branded interface to each of their clients via Google's API. This tool, available in 26 languages, enables access providers to insert the information provided by Google in the administration interface proposed by the hosting company to its clients.

Sources:

- http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/introducing-google-webmaster-tools.html
- http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/07/helping-yourself-to-webmaster-tools.html

Last week Yahoo! announced the launching of Yahoo! Search BOSS, a web services platform that allows developers and companies to create and launch web-scale search products by utilizing the same infrastructure and technology that powers Yahoo! Search. BOSS (Build your Own Search Service) is an API or library of functions that can be used by programmers in their own software in order to freely create their own search applications:

• By using Yahoo! Search's index and infrastructure
• Possibility of presenting results in a different order than the one used by Yahoo! and adding additional information, links, etc.
• Total freedom and flexibility in presenting the results
• Unlimited number of daily queries.

When we know that Yahoo!'s algorithm is not that different from Google's in terms of results, we can only suppose that BOSS will please a vast community of developers and numerous projects will start emerging. We'll follow them closely!

Sources:

- http://developer.yahoo.com/search/boss/
- http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000599.html

We can talk as much as we want about Google (and God knows how much we can critique them sometimes) but we can't deny the fact that they are smart and visionary.

In fact, as soon as Overture - Yahoo! Search Marketing, Google's main competitor started existing, many experts have raised their voices to say that the only thing missing about Google's keyword tool was numbers rather than approximations depicted by a green bar.

Well things have changed! Although they are still approximations, Google's keyword tool now offers advertisers and media planners more readable and precise numbers concerning search volume.

You can try it out here: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Last week, Google unveiled a new tool that measures Internet use. Advertisers can now use this tool which is intended to help them identify websites that their target audiences visit, hence helping them decide the best places to buy their online ads. Read more about Google AdPlanner.

Adobe, the software manufacturer Adobe announced yesterday that it would begin providing optimized Flash technology to leading search engines that will make rich Internet applications (RIA) and dynamic content created using Flash more easily identifiable. "Up 'til now, Flash content just hasn't been as thoroughly searchable as we'd like," said Justin Everett-Church, senior product manager for Adobe Flash Player. Read more about it here.