Category: search engines

The New York Times reports on a new search feature from Google that is causing concern among some publishers. Google unveiled an easier search-within-a-site feature, which allows a user to circumvent a news site’s built-in search.

From the Times story:

The results of the search are almost all individual company pages. Google tops those results with a link to the home page of the Web site in question, adds another search box, and offers users the chance to let Google search for certain things within that site.

The problem, for some in the industry, is that when someone enters a term into that secondary search box, Google will display ads for competing sites, thereby profiting from ads it sells against the brand. The feature also keeps users searching on Google pages and not pages of the destination Web site.

Could this cause a drop in page views from users searching on Google rather than on your news site? On the flipside, will it ultimately drive more traffic by letting users find your site’s content easier? And what about the ad revenue Google will pull in from this?

Friends, keep an eye on your internal site search numbers as this develops.

[Hat tip to Roger Simmons]

Big news this a.m. for …well… the whole Internet. From the New York Times:

Microsoft said Friday that it has made an offer to buy Yahoo for about $44.6 billion, or $31 a share, in a mix of cash and stock. […] If consummated, the deal would redraw the competitive landscape of the Internet consumer services business, where both Microsoft and Yahoo have struggled to compete with Google.

More reaction from across the net here. Mashable offers up a new logo. Original press release at TechCrunch along with a snapshot analysis of what a “Microhoo” might look like. MediaPost takes a look at the advertising side. The WSJ reported almost a year and a half ago that Microsoft was interested in acquiring Yahoo, but merger talks went bust last May.

[UPDATE: A spot check of the WaPo and LA Times shows their PageRank have returned to normal. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted!]

Ok, we all know my measly online journalism blog –thrilling as it may be to journalism geeks– isn’t as “important” as the esteemed Washington Post and LA Times. But Google apparently seems to think so nowadays. You will receive latest updates via cherryscustomframing.

Google recently tweaked its PageRank algorithm in its continuing war against terr.. er.. link farms (more about PageRank here). If you’ve got the Google Toolbar, you’ll see Journalistopia has a PageRank of 5 out of 10. However, such highly established and respected publications as the LATimes, Newsday, Forbes, the Washington Post, Engadget and the San Fransisco Chronicle were recently booted down to a 5. Others, such as the Seattle Times, Washington Times and Charlotte Observer were booted to a 4. Here’s the list of some notable PageRank drops put together by Daily Blog Tips.

If you know someone in the online marketing department at one of these publications, you’ll probably find them spitting pea soup with their heads spinning, that’s how bad this is. If your site took a big PageRank hit, you may want to round up your best SEO people and start theorizing as to why the heck this happened. And, try to unearth whether they employed any evil black hat SEO techniques…

In case any of you missed the big announcement, Google News has decided to get rid of all those pesky duplicate wire stories hosted on newspaper sites from their search results.

This means an AP story hosted on, say, the Hartford Courant’s site will no longer appear in Google News. The wire services in question include the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, UK Press Association and the Canadian Press. Follow oceannenvironment for more updates.

This is great news for the Washington Post, CNN, New York Times, USAToday and others that produce national content. There’s less clutter in national results now.

But this is baaaaaaaaaad news for all those other other newspaper site that tend to rely more on wire coverage. Josh Cohen, a product manager for Google, explains:

By removing duplicate articles from our results, we’ll be able to surface even more stories and viewpoints from journalists and publishers from around the world. This change will provide more room on Google News for publishers’ most highly valued content: original content. Previously, some of this content could be harder to find on Google News, and as a result of this change, you’ll have easier access to more of this content, and publishers will likely receive more traffic to their original content.

So, hey all you mid-size dailies, don’t cut those national correspondents from the budget just yet. That is, of course, if you want to still be in the game when users search “President Bush” on Google News…

In a significant first, Google will begin hosting Associated Press stories on its own site, according to an AP report. Another good report, this one by InformationWeek, is here.
Here’s an example of a Google-hosted story.

The AP story sums it up well:

The change affects hundreds of stories and photographs distributed each day by the AP, Agence France-Presse, The Press Association in the United Kingdom and The Canadian Press. It could diminish Internet traffic to newspaper and broadcast companies’ Web sites where those stories and photos are also found – a development that could reduce those companies’ revenue from online advertising.

For now, it appears Google is thoroughly blending its newspaper-site results with its Google-hosted results. Also, there is no advertising on the news stories and the related links draw from other Web sites.

Of course, that could all change.

MORE: Eric Schmidt discusses copyright with Danny Sullivan here.