I-Search #099: Fall Weather

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             "Understanding Internet Search Technology"
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Moderator:                                          Published by:
Disa Johnson                                       SearchReturn
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October 12, 2006                          SearchReturn Issue #099
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                   .....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"

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// -- ESSENTIAL NEWS -- //

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==> 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.

 

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==> 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.

 

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==> 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.

 

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==> 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.

 

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==> 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.

 
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