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SearchWrite SearchNews
Caching Better Results in Search Marketing
Vol II, Issue 033 9.22.05
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CACHING THE LATEST RESULTS IN SEARCH MARKETING....

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Google Print Draws Ire
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Infamous among publishers, Google's dormant Google Print initiative which was scheduled to resume scanning activities on November 1, has drawn the ire and backlash of the Author's Guild— the largest organization of book authors in America—which has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against Google, claiming "massive copyright infringement".

Google's plan to keep the library initiative from turning into an unruly free-for-all, was to establish certain limits: Users could only read up to five pages at a time of any books that are currently copyrighted, and some pages would be blocked to those without a valid Google account. Google would also be taking measures to deter the printing and copying of works. 

Beyond the potential devaluation of their copyrighted works, the crux of the Guild's argument hinges on the issue of permission. As Google has set things up, authors are essentially put in a defensive position: if they or their publishers don't want their works to be digitized that have to take an action that will stop the proceedings from occurring. But what right, the Guild asks, does Google have to decide that literary works are fair game unless the author decrees otherwise? In their view, thing ought to be moving in the opposite direction, if at all: if Google wants to scan and republish a book on the web, it ought to be asking the copyright holder (the author) for permission first—not assuming that the content is for the taking unless the legal rights holder objects. Stay tuned!


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Search Drives One In Five Visits To Car Sites
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A new study from Yahoo finds that one in five visitors to a car web site originated at  a search engine. That's 20.6 percent of visitors, up from 17.5 percent last year. The study also found that nearly 70 percent of those buying cars said they first turned to search for advice. Search was also considered the most credible research source. 

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Yahoo Adds Shortcuts to Search
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Instant Search marks the latest in a string of new features for Yahoo! Put simply, it is the capability of the Yahoo! search page to display results to popular search terms spontaneously as a user types words into Yahoo's site. For instance, when a user enters the term "NFL" into the site, the page begins to automatically populate itself with links to content related to the National Football League, before the search is ever launched. When there is no shortcut available for a specific term, the site displays the top results for its most popularly searched topics.

Another aspect of the system is that it corrects simple spelling mistakes in users' queries, as it automatically fixes terms that have been entered into its search box. 

Instant Search can also be customized to integrate with other Yahoo features, including the company's Web-based e-mail client, news sites and My Web personalization settings.


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10 Years of Popular Search Terms at Lycos
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As Lycos celebrates its 10th birthday, The Lycos 50, their daily look at popular search terms, has published a new list that takes a look at the 50 most popular terms over the past decade. 

http://50.lycos.com/elite.asp


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The Butler Is Out...Ask.com is In!
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Jeeves, the eponymous British butler who has been the chief face of  Internet search engine Ask Jeeves since its mid-90s founding, may be out of a job.

IAC/InterActiveCorp., the New York Internet conglomerate that bought Ask Jeeves in July for $1.9 billion, is dropping the mascot, according to a Wednesday report in online financial news site, TheStreet.com.

The reason? To rebrand the Ask Jeeves search engine as the more streamlined Ask.com as the company pushes into foreign markets such as China where the Jeeves character - based on the English valet character in the popular 1930s-era novels by P.G. Wodehouse - is not well known to potential visitors. 

The Street.com reported that Diller joked, "I don't see many tears on the floor."


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SEO TIP  OF THE WEEK    Meta Tags Back from the Brink
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Colleague Dan Thies reports "I can't believe that it's 2005 and I'm writing about META tags. They've recently come roaring back with a vengeance. Google and Yahoo have both been spotted using META descriptions "occasionally" in the past. Well, Google has ramped it up in a big way, showing META descriptions (and DMOZ / Open Directory descriptions) in place of 'snippets' on a lot more search results. They're even fiddling with the titles on listings, as Yahoo does.

The conditions that trigger this appear to be fairly simple. When the search terms appear in the META description, the META description is used instead of a snippet. If the META description is absent, the DMOZ description is used, as long as the search terms match.

With an exact match between the query and the DMOZ listing's title, Google will display that instead of the title tag from the web page. Google "Raise My Rank" to see an example - that's Bob Gladstein's site at #1, and Google is showing the title from his DMOZ listing.

I recommend that every site use a META description tag on the home page at least. For other pages that may show up on multi-word queries, you may be better off having a snippet displayed on the search results. Google is giving you some control over how your listings appear, at least for now.
Just don't abuse it - a few [marketers] have added their toll-free phone numbers to their META descriptions, and I think that's a very good idea. However, I have seen some cases where META tags aren't being displayed, and it's possible that the use of "hyperbole" may trigger a filter, as it does with Adwords."

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