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SearchWrite SearchNews
Caching Better Results in Search Marketing
Vol V, Issue 044 12.15.05
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CACHING THE LATEST RESULTS IN SEARCH MARKETING....


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AOL Releases List of 2005's Top Search Terms
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Time for year-end wrap-ups in the search keyword category. AOL has just announced their list of top searches performed in 2005, divided into 21 categories:

The Overall Top 10:
1. Lottery
2. Horoscopes
3. Tattoos
4. Lyrics
5. Ringtones
6. IRS
7. Jokes
8. American Idol
9. Hairstyles
10. NASCAR

Interesting to see lottery and IRS are both in the Top 10. A few of the "number ones" in various other categories include: Top People: Paris Hilton (Ms. Hilton was the nunber one search overall on Lycos). Top Person Under 21: Linday Lohan; Top Person Over 40: Oprah Winfrey, Howard Stern at number 2; + Top Video Searches: Fifty Cent, Paris Hilton comes in at number two. Top Song: We Belong Together- Mariah Carey, Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl" is at number 2.

In the Top Gadgets category: 
1. iPods
2. Cell Phones
3. Playstation 3
4. Xbox 360
5. MP3 Players
6. XM Radio
7. Laptops
8. Palm Pilots
9. Sirius Radio

<http://hot.aol.com/2005/index.html>


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Yahoo! buys del.icio.us
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Yahoo has acquired Del.icio.us, the New York-based startup that is considered a pioneer in social bookmarking, a type of online service that lets users save, annotate and tag links to their favorite Web pages and share their lists with other users.

Both Yahoo and Del.icio.us separately announced the deal on Friday afternoon via postings on official blogs. Financial terms were not disclosed.

“Together we’ll continue to improve how people discover, remember and share on the Internet, with a big emphasis on the power of community,” Del.icio.us founder and Chief Executive Officer Joshua Schachter wrote in his company’s official blog.

In the official blog from the search engine unit at Yahoo, Jeremy Zawodny wrote that the Del.icio.us team will be working “in close proximity” to Flickr, a photo-sharing service that Yahoo bought in March of this year.


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PriceGrabber Sold to Experian for $485 Million
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Shopping search engine, PriceGrabber has been purchased by Experian Information Services. Yes, the same Experian that provides credit history, credit risk, and related info to business and to consumers worldwide. Experian's parent, GUS Plc, is Britain's second-largest retailer by market value. It paid $485 million to acquire PriceGrabber.

Experian's interactive division also owns LowermyBills.com, MetaReward, Affiliate Fuel, ClassesUSA.com and Experian Consumer Direct.

Orange Country, CA based PriceGrabber maintains its own site and also powers shopping search on many other sites including Ask Jeeves, Comcast's web portal, and others. It also has an agreement with MSN. PriceGrabber offers products and services from about 9000 merchants. PriceGrabber was formed in 1999 and employs 140 people.


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OpinMind - For Fun If Not for Relevance
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Santa Clara based OpinMind has a neat service that polls the blogophere for its opinion on the topic of your choice.

OpinMind claims to index 1.7 million blogs today. Type in a search engine-like query (or click on popular searches like “beer“) and see a result categorized into “positive” and “negative” for your query. OpinMind tries to determine whether a blog is positive or negative on the item you’ve entered based on surrounding context.

And you can do a faceoff by typing two queries with a “vs.” between them. Try Google vs. Yahoo (Google nudges out Yahoo with a 73% v. 55% approval rating - I wonder if that will change much over time) . Or Democrats vs. Republicans (Democrats win with a 42% approval rating v. 27% for Republicans).

Statistically relevant? Not even close. Fun? Totally. 


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Yahoo! Creates Original Reality Show For Web
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Yahoo has plans to launch a new reality show on the Internet. The program, "Wow House," will be an integral part of Yahoo!' Tech, the online media giant's technology content channel, which is set to launch by the first quarter of next year.  Similar to home makeover television shows, "Wow House" follows two families as they renovate and upgrade their home electronics. Each household is given $10,000 with which to purchase new theater systems and the like, but only one family can keep the new equipment. Viewers will vote on which home gets to retain the merchandise.

Yahoo estimated the pilot would cost $100,000 to produce, a fraction of the cost of a scripted TV show like "Lost."  "Wow House" will join Yahoo!'s portfolio of original video content, including "Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone," which launched in September and features war correspondent Sites as he travels to various centers of conflict around the globe, and travel show "Richard Bangs' Adventures."


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SEO Tip of the Week Off-Page Optimization
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When it comes to organic SEO (search engine optimization), properly planned "offpage optimization" can make the difference between your website ranking #900 on Google, to ranking #1! So, what is offpage optimization anyway? Offpage optimization basically consists of the following ranking factors. Make each one an organic SEO priority.  

    * Which websites link to you
    * The number of websites linking to you
    * The Google page rank of the website linking to you
    * The page title of the website linking to you
    * The anchor text used in the link linking to you
    * The number and type of links linking to the website that’s linking to you.
    * The number of outbound links on the website that is linking to you
    * The total number of links on the website that is linking to you
    * Whether or not the website linking to you are deemed by Google as an authority
website.

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