LBi Search: LBi Search Newsletter: October 2007

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Search Engine Updates

Google PageRank updates hit sites that sell paid links

A recent Google PageRank update has reduced the PageRank of a number of prominent sites.

Google Engineer Matt Cutts told Search Engine Journal that the update was aimed at sites that have been selling links for their PageRank benefit.

Yahoo! update

Yahoo! has had yet another update this month. Early indications suggest that this update may be more significant than some of its previous updates, with more changes in the results than usual.

Yahoo! backlink counts break

Yahoo! currently offers one of the most comprehensive lists of backlinks via its Site Explorer tool. However, earlier this month it was discovered that when sites were being examined, the total amount of backlinks shown for those users who were logged in differed from the number shown to unregistered users.

On October 26, Yahoo! announced that an error had been discovered, and asked webmasters to disregard any counts for inlinks reported by Site Explorer from the 11th of October. On November 6, Yahoo! announced that the issue had been resolved.

Google offers option to block undesirable 'sitelinks'

Google is giving verified website owners a degree of control over their 'sitelinks' (the multiple small links that are sometimes shown beneath the first return for a search). The search engine is allowing webmasters to block specific sitelinks that they do not wish to appear.

Acquisitions and Partnerships

Microsoft buys a 1.6% stake in Facebook for $240 million

In what has been widely seen as a victory over Google, Microsoft has bought a 1.6% stake in Facebook for $240 million, a figure which puts Facebook's value at $15 billion.

Facebook has since received two more investments of $250 million each from two hedge funds, and speculation is mounting that the social networking site may now do an early IPO.

Microsoft acquires shopping search engine Jellyfish.com

Microsoft has purchased the price comparison shopping engine Jellyfish.com. It is likely that this will eventually be integrated with its other Windows Live services.

New Product Launches

Google launches open API for social networks

Google has launched Open Social, an open API which will allow data on social networks to be shared more easily. A number of prominent social networks including MySpace have already signed up to implement Open Social.

This is being seen in some quarters as a move against Facebook, which has been gaining users at a rapid rate.

YouTube launches embeddable video players with integrated ads

Google has introduced advertising-supported videos to its AdSense network. Website owners can include videos, which will include unobtrusive advertising, from selected YouTube content providers on their own web pages.

Both the content providers and website owners will receive a cut of any advertising revenues that Google receives from users who click on these ads.

Microsoft launches more Live Search features

Hot on the heels of its major web search upgrades in September, Microsoft has released a new batch of Live Search features focused around on mobile and local search. These include:

Live Search 411 (which is similar to Google's GOOG-411 service)
improved driving directions
expanded 3D map views
support for BlackBerry devices
improved Live Search for Windows Mobile devices, including voice input.

Google launches tool to identify a website's intended geographic location

Google has added a new feature to its Webmaster Tools which allows verified site owners to tell Google which geographic location their site is intended for.

The options available include "no geographic location", a country and even a location within a country (which can be specified right down to a street address). Geographic locations can be specified on a domain, subdomain or subdirectory basis, providing a very flexible configuration for webmasters.

This feature is currently only available through Google, and other search engines may or may not adopt this approach, so more traditional geotargeting techniques should still be used alongside this.

News and Research

Online advertising revenues continues massive growth

New figures released by the Interactive Advertising Bureau show that internet advertising revenues are continuing to increase dramatically.

In the UK market, online advertising experienced a 41.3% year on year growth in the first half of 2007, and has now overtaken the direct mail advertising sector in size. Classified advertising was particularly strong, growing 72% year on year.

In Q2 of 2007, US online advertising revenues reached a record $5.1 billion, exceeding the $5 billion mark for the first time. Search continues to account for the largest amount of revenue, at 41% of the total spend.

Google now powers over half of all the world's searches

A study by comScore has revealed that during August 2007, Google powered over half of all searches undertaken in the entire world. Users performed around 37 billion searches on Google, more than the combined number carried out using the other major search engines.

Yahoo! came in second with 8.5 billion searches. Microsoft's 2.1 billion searches pushed it down to fourth on the list, behind the Chinese search engine Baidu with 3.2 billion searches.