----------------------------------------------------------------- SearchReturn Discussion List "Understanding Internet Search Technology" ----------------------------------------------------------------- Moderator: Published by: Disa Johnson SearchReturn http://www.searchreturn.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- October 12, 2006 SearchReturn Issue #099 ----------------------------------------------------------------- SEND POSTS: ----------------------------------------------------------------- Refer a friend: http://www.searchreturn.com/subscribe.shtml ----------------------------------------------------------------- .....IN THIS DIGEST..... // -- ESSENTIAL NEWS -- // "Fall Season Weather Reports" "Holiday Ecommerce On Track For $32 Billion" "Ask Launches Mobile Search" "Yahoo! Woes" "Yahoo! Supports NOODP" ----------------------------------------------------------------- // -- ESSENTIAL NEWS -- // ----------------------------------------------------------------- ==> Fall Season Weather Reports Google: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/fall-weather-forecast/ Yahoo!: http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000364.html Essentials: Now that the fall is here and Holiday shopping draws near, Google and Yahoo! announced updates to their search engines in anticipation of providing better service to searchers (and webmasters / advertisers) through the remainder of the year. The Yahoo! weather report prompted Matt Cutts of Google to go ahead and make his announcement. Matt provided details in addition to announcing general search improvements, include better accuracy for [site:], [link:] and other queries. It is well-known that at any point the Google PageRank scoring meter for the Toolbar is information from several months in the past. Since there was a recent update to this, Matt declares the next update probably won't happen until 2007. It is time to start looking for changes to your indexing and ranking for Google and Yahoo! to get the sense for how well you might do through the Holiday shopping season. It is also wise to assume the other major engines, namely MSN and Ask, will also be busy with changes to improve search at their locations through 2006. Webmasters can expect to start seeing updates across the board and anticipate fluctuation through Christmas. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ==> Holiday Ecommerce On Track For $32 Billion http://www.dmnews.com/cms/dm-news/e-commerce/38518.html Essentials: Interestingly, Jupiter projects that fully one third of online shoppers will continue the purchasing process even after shipping cutoff dates making their product arrival late for the Holiday. Retailers have long promoted shipping cutoff dates to help shoppers sense of urgency about their online purchases. Jupiter reports that more than half the shoppers say the cutoff date information helps them plan their purchases. Apparently, many shoppers are content with late arrivals as well. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ==> Ask Launches Mobile Search http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/061012-000113 Essentials: Barry Schwartz wrote at the Search Engine Watch Blog a nice rundown covering features and showing screenshots of the new Ask Mobile Search product. The services offered do not differ greatly from what Yahoo! Mobile Search already offers, however it seems important to note that using either Yahoo! and now Ask provides a better user experience than what Google has done for mobile to date. At Google, there is SMS search for the esoteric geek, but if you visit Google XHTML, you get access to far fewer offerings: Web, Images, Local listings and Mobile Web (Beta). There are also links to: News, Gmail and Personalized. If you try Personalized, you will discover it is trimmed of third party widgets and even some Google powered widgets don't make the cut for small screen devices. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ==> Yahoo! Woes http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/061012-081649 Essentials: In front of a New York Times analysis that Yahoo! is slipping due to entrants in the marketplace, advertisers have been frustrated over several days of Yahoo! system outage. A recent posting shows Yahoo! has apparently corrected the problem. With press about their shortcomings and this system outage, Yahoo! needs to recapture search marketers' attention somehow. http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/061011-094042 Google recently announced plans to focus and spend less time on the crazy array of products they have, and use more time for integrating them. Perhaps Yahoo! might consider thinking of similarly making the Flickr and Del.icio.us purchases pay off with Web search somehow. Speculation aside, Yahoo! has delivered fewer visitors in general, but they continue to beat Microsoft for second place. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ==> Yahoo! Supports NOODP http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/006372.html Essentials: Tim Meyer of Yahoo! announced in discussion with Barry Schwartz the future support for Meta NOODP, (which allows webmasters to indicate they would prefer the search engine not use the ODP Description for site listings). ODP (DMOZ) can be well out of date and otherwise incorrect, which can harm the accuracy of listings. Google and MSN have both confirmed, and now Yahoo! joins them in support for Meta NOODP. Tim also responded to the question about support for a similar Meta tag for Yahoo! Directory titles. Despite some queries where Danny was able to show the algorithm breaking down, Tim said Yahoo! is pretty good at figuring out when to use the Directory info on its own without the need for additional Meta data. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stay Tuned. Got feedback?: http://www.searchreturn.com/feedback.shtml Archives: http://www.searchreturn.com/digest-archive.shtml Alternate formats: http://www.searchreturn.com/info-formats.shtml Manage Subscriptions: http://www.searchreturn.com/help/manage-subs.shtml Problems unsubscribing? 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