Archive for June, 2007
Jun
30
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Internet Advertising From June 11th to June 15th, the ACM Special Interest Group on Electronic Commerce (SIGECOM) held its eighth conference in San Diego, California.
There were a good number of accepted papers for the conference, and I was able to hunt a few of them down online.
Budget Optimization in Search-Based Advertising Auctions (pdf)
Cliff Stein from Columbia University; Jon Feldman, S. Muthukrishnan, and Martin Pal from Google
Internet search companies sell advertisement slots based on users’ search queries via an auction. While there has been a lot of attention on the auction process and its game-theoretic aspects, our focus is on the advertisers. In particular, the advertisers have to solve a complex optimization problem of how to place bids on the keywords of their interest so that they can maximize their return (the number of user clicks on their ads) for a given budget.
Allocating online advertisement space with unreliable estimates (pdf)
Hamid Nazerzadeh [...] Read the rest of this entry »
Jun
29
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Search Engine Optimization Google described some of its janitors in a recent patent application.
Here are some of the different kinds of Google janitors, and the things that they do:
Blacklist janitor - These janitors look at patterns, and eliminate any facts that match certain patterns. So, they may be responsible for cleaning up some of the language in facts, and removing curse words.
Singleton-attribute janitor - Identifies attributes for facts which should be unique per object, and eliminate all but one instance of that attribute on any given object. Because of this janitor, when we ask about William Shatner’s birthday in Google, we are only given one date (22 March, 1931)
String-cleanup janitor - Their function is to trim unuseful characters, such as @, #, %, or !, from the beginning or end of attributes.
Name-group-threshold-match janitor - They merge duplicate objects if those share a certain number of attributes, based on their [...]
Original post by William Slawski and software by Elliott Back
Jun
28
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Search Marketing Tribble Ad Agency has discovered something of a shocker, the name of the Google Itunes competitor. It was (or is) to be called, SONGNOW
The Google filed trademarks on that name, and kept it live and the industry buzz is that there is a flurry of activity surrounding ‘SONGNOW’.
Google job Tribble Ad Agency for finding this one.
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Original post by TheFounder and software by Elliott Back
Jun
28
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Local Search and Maps In a digital map system, like Google Earth or Google Maps, it is possible for users to annotate placemarks using brief descriptions relevant to those locations.
The Google Earth Community is filled with examples of such placemarks. It’s also possible to come up with your own custom Google Maps using the Google Map API, or using the Google My Maps feature.
Google has come up with a way of ranking these custom placemarks in different placemark layers, which they’ve referred to as Place Rank. Click on the image for a larger view of placemarks shown in Google Earth.
They’ve also come up with a way of personalizing some aspects of rankings of different locations based upon an interestingness measure, for different users - this kind of personalized information is stored locally on someone’s computer.
Place Rank and Interestingness are described in a patent application from Google:
Entity Display Priority in [...] Read the rest of this entry »
Jun
27
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Google News 100 grand is always nice.
Marrissa explains how, and annouces some other stuff, at the Searchnomics Conference today.
”Google Gadget Ventures is a new Google pilot program dedicated to helping developers create richer, more useful Google Gadgets. Inspired by the success of iGoogle, which has been driven by the creation by 3rd-party developers of a broad range […]
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Original post by Peter Da Vanzo and software by Elliott Back
Jun
27
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Search Engine Optimization Seeing that the UK don’t seem to be getting any sunlight this summer I did a few searches for some places which do. While searching for Barcelona on Google Images I noticed a picture of Theirry Henry listed, nothing too strange there expect that the photo was from Monday when he signed for FC Barcelona!
I couldn’t find any further information about an increase in Google Images indexing and as far as I’m aware the last update back was in March. It’s possible there has been a full update within the last 24 hours but if that’s the case I still wouldn’t expect this image to be included, what seems likely is that a limited number of highly regarded news sources are getting images indexed far more frequently. The Shanghai Daily isn’t the only website where this is happening, images from uefa.com and tsn.ca covering the same story are also [...]
Original post by Kev and software by Elliott Back
Jun
26
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Local Search and Maps Imagine owning a baseball related website and sponsoring a layer on Google Earth, where you show all of the major league and minor league ball parks, as well as historically important locations (Babe Ruth’s birthplace, Negro league stadiums, etc.). Consider also including the training camp stadiums.
Seriously, ESPN or CBS or Baseball News, or Major League Baseball, please consider doing all of that.
Sponsorship of a layer in Google Earth is one of the items discussed in a patent application from Google that came out last week at the World International Patent Office (WIPO):
Determining Advertisements Using User Interest Information and Map-based Location Information
Published June 21, 2007
Int. Publication No: WO 2007/070358 A2
Int. App. No: PCT/US2006/046782
Filed: December 8, 2006
Invented by Steve Glassman, Joshy Joseph, Bill Kilday, Giao Nguyen, Dominic Preuss, and Sridhar Ramaswamy
Abstract
In response to a query for information in a geographic region or at a location, ranked ads may [...]
Original post by William Slawski and software by Elliott Back
Jun
26
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Search Engines and Directories The Web isn’t a static place, where pages remain the same, as search engines try to index and lead searchers to information.
A new patent application from Ask.com explores this stream of data, and trends within it, and how those can be used to improve search rankings and advertisements, as well as supplying searchers with relevant and up to date content.
I would suspect that similar inquiries into trends and burstiness of information happen at other search engines, too.
System and method for monitoring evolution over time of temporal content
Invented by Antonino Gulli, Filippo Tanganelli, and Antonio Savona
Assigned to Ask Jeeves, Inc.
US Patent Application 20070143300
Published June 21, 2007
Filed: December 20, 2005
Abstract
A method and a system to receive temporal content from many sources over a transmission line, store the temporal content in at least one storage device, extract entity content from the temporal content, analyze entity occurrences to determine temporal content trends, [...]
Original post by William Slawski and software by Elliott Back
Jun
26
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blogging Fookin’ Threadwatch is closing. That’s a shame. We need more edgy voices that aren’t beholden to advertisers.
When the blogshere started, it was all edgy. Why? There was no money in it, so it might as well be fun. Actually, there’s still no money in it, unless a blog takes the shape of conventional old-media, or […]
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Jun
26
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Personalization Google has come out with four patent applications on the customizable personalized user pages that they offer, with modular applications and informational pieces as the centerpoint of those pages.
The document discuss the use of different approaches, such as iframes, Ajax, RSS feeds, and other ways of presenting information on that page.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of these is the idea of a software development Kit (SDK) that third parties can use to create additional modules for users of this service.
Creating something interesting and unique, and making it available for people to use on their personalized page might be a nice way of getting yourself noticed.
Here are the patent applications:
Customized container document modules using preferences
Remote module incorporation into a container document
Module specification for a module to be incorporated into a container document
Proxy server collection of data for module incorporation into a container document
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Jun
26
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Search Engine Optimization Domain trust has fast becoming the new green (bar).
This article nails it:
“I still think in the balance of domain trust vs. SERPs chasing, the affiliate folks should lean a little closer to the known high converting SERPs due to the nature of that game. But for the definitive online audience builder, the smartest thing […]
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Original post by Peter Da Vanzo and software by Elliott Back
Jun
25
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Search News I’ve been in Fiji on holiday. Bliss.
Back now. It is a shock to the system going from wonderful and warm back to cold and wet. It is also a shock to the system trying to catch up on everything that has been happening since I’ve been away. It makes you realise just how fast the […]
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Original post by Peter Da Vanzo and software by Elliott Back
Jun
25
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Search Queries Last week, Udi Manber, Google’s VP of Engineering, gave a short presentation where he discussed the difficulties that face search engines.
One of the problems he pointed out was that “20 to 25% of the queries we see today, we have never seen before.”
A patent application published for Yahoo on the same day, Interactive search engine, about supplying predictive queries to searchers as they are typing the query terms into the search box, bases a decision to do so on the assumption that
…it is highly probable that a user intends to issue a query in which at least one other person has issued previously.
I’ve written about Yahoo’s approach to predictive queries before, as well as Google’s use of predictive queries.
Both methods rely upon looking at the popularity of queries used previously, as well are frequent recent queries. Yet if so many queries are new, does the assumption becomes [...] Read the rest of this entry »
Jun
24
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Local Search and Maps Google introduced street views to selected areas of their maps recently.
Not discussed in Google’s Street View help sections is how those views might help Google improve the accuracy of locations for both the maps, and for Google’s business locations databases.
A problem with search engine mapping databases is that the information collected hasn’t always been very accurate, based upon the way that the this kind of information has been collected.
Often, GPS location information for some “anchor” street addresses are known for these systems, and the locations for businesses and buildings between the anchors has been interpolated.
According to the authors of a new patent application from Google, significant discrepancies are sometimes observed between actual GPS locations and interpolated locations, with actual addresses being off by 100 yards or more.
So, how might the Street Views help?
The patent application is:
Database assisted OCR for street scenes and other [...]
Original post by William Slawski and software by Elliott Back
Jun
23
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Search Marketing We figured we would give everyone some idea of what our new offices will be looking like. They are currently under construction and we wanted to give you a sneak peek of what it will be looking like:
Picture 1- Picture -2 Picture -3 Picture -4 Picture -5 Picture -6 Picture -7 Picture -8 Picture -9 Picture -10 Picture -11 Picture -12 Picture -13 Picture - 14
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Original post by TheFounder and software by Elliott Back
