As always some news about what Google and Baidu are up to in China but also some interesting results from a user panel with young Chinese users.

Online book search
Both Google and Baidu are now also in a race to corner the market for online book search.

From PC Pro:

Web search leader Google and its top rival in China Baidu.com are racing to create their online library services in a fierce battle for a slice of the world’s second-largest Internet market.

Both are trying to get into strategic partnerships with Universities and local publishing houses. Where Google will offer full text search, Baidu starts with including library catalogue records of the mainland’s top libraries.

.CN domain names
Recently there was also the news that Google hasn’t been able to secure the domain gmail.cn and the Chinese owner, an ISP, refuses to sell. I doubt they really refuse to sell. it’s likely to be the price that will be the issue. I once contacted a Chinese domain owner for a rather average domain and was quoted the opportunistic sum of US$100,000.00. In the case of Google I can only imagine that it will be a lot higher.

The good news for Google and everyone else that is eager to buy domain names with the extension .cn is, that the cost for registering a Chinese domain is dropping.

From the People’s Daily

China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), the country’s domain name administrator, says the first-year registration fee for domain names ending in “.cn” will be one Yuan(one U.S. dollar equals 7.74 Yuan).

CNNIC is hoping the move will attract registrations from enterprises and netizens. Previously it cost between 80 and 100 Yuan to register a domain name in China.

Young Chinese Internet users do …

The most interestingly tidbit of information came from Netanel Jacobsson. He attended the focus group panel with young Chinese users at Piper Jaffray’s China Growth Conference.

He summed up the following key points that are useful for anyone considering targeting the Chinese Internet users (that are predominantly young users.)

• Favorite activities seems to be to download movies and mp3’s
• Baidu is the favorite search engine mainly because of mp3’s
• Google is considered “better” in terms of quality
• Prefer to download movies that are either Asian or European (French!) not Hollywood movies..
• Cannot consider paying for any content. Especially not for music or movies
• But, are very willing to pay for ringtones, virtual items, avatars etc - One girl even paid to get a doctor to heal her sick QQ pet…
• All users bought online
• All used Alipay to pay for goods online - some cash on delivery

-
Gemme van Hasselt is an Internet Marketing Consultant, living in Shanghai, and owner of the China Directory.

Sony is opening its own virtual world. In my perfect universe, Nintendo will buy Linden Labs and I’ll be able to walk around Second Life with a Wii.

Wikia aiming for 4th quarter search engine launch.

Bloggers helping with natural disasters. Interesting.

The National Archives (UK) releases new exhibit: 300 Years of Carribean History.

Q&A With Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist. It’s 2007 and we STILL need Internet evangelists?

Comparing the Congressional Record to the videotape from the actual proceedings. Guess what? They don’t match. http://reason.com/news/show/119028.html. (Digital archive available which is why I’m covering this.)

A database of “snow science” information.

University of Florida: Abandoning Net Neutrality Discourages Improvements in Service.

Job listings in podcasts. Hey, why not?

Thanks to Cyber Aspect for their nice review of Information Trapping.

Now this is an interesting idea. The Ageless Project, at http://jenett.org/ageless/, lists blogs by the birth years of their authors. As you might expect the majority of blogs listed are by bloggers born in the 1970s, but the directory lists bloggers born as early as 1911 to those born as late as 1988.

The site’s simple. You can do a keyword search or you can browse by decade of birth. (There are so many blogs from the 1970s that you can optionally browse that decade one half at a time.) The 1911 blogger unfortunately does not write in English, but the gentleman who was born in 1913 and writes Don to Earth does some really nice stuff. Blogs are listed with a screen thumbnail, name, year of birth, and name of blogs. Blogs open in a new window. I would really like more description than is provided but to be fair most of these are personal journals with not much in the line of specialty. (Though “My Mom’s Blog” has a recipe for a pie that includes ketchup. I’m going to have to make that for my husband.)

I’m surprised how many people from the 20s and 30s are blogging — awesome! To get an idea of how the site breaks out across ages, visit the stats page. There are a total of about just over 1700 blogs listed here. The site includes information on how to submit a site, but there are several restrictions (mostly concerning amount and type of advertising on sites.) A fun browse!

This post came from ResearchBuzz, a site with news and information about online data collections. Visit us at ResearchBuzz.com .

Google has announced some new features at its Google Finance property, available at http://finance.google.com/ . As you might expect, Google Finance allows you track stocks, get business information, etc. It’s in beta, as usual.

And watch videos. One of the improvements announced for Google Finance is the addition of finance-related videos, including content from CBS, Forbes, and First Business. There are just a few at the bottom of the page, and then you’re prompted to link directly to Google Video for a search for Finance. (Did I miss that Google Video is now providing RSS feeds for search results? Look to the right of the search results count.)

Google Finance has also extended its stock charts. Stocks now show prices from extended hour markets. You have to set that, though, when you’re looking at a chart — it’s not a default view. Charts run from one-day view to one-year view.

The third item was the ability to drag-and-drop portfolio stocks to put them in an order other than alphabetical, but I couldn’t get that to work. I even tried it on the Google homepage.

Despite that third item I really like Google Finance; I hadn’t spent a whole lot of time with it. I like the autocompletion of stock symbols, the integration of news points onto charts, the detailed news listings, the instant refresh of charts, the uncluttered interface. Going to spend more time over here!

This post came from ResearchBuzz, a site with news and information about online data collections. Visit us at ResearchBuzz.com .

"Last I heard, the cause or means of transmission of AIDS was not known. I would appreciate any pointers to well-documented claims to the contrary."

"The disease sounds very frightening. I had heard about it about two weeks ago. Seems like the public should be more aware of it."

I was reading an interesting question on Google’s webmaster help group that was posted a few weeks ago. The question was

Is there any official Google statement regarding that search result on
one’s own site ought to be disallowed from indexing (e.g. via
robots.txt)?

and the questioner went on to mention that YouTube’s search results were showing up in Google. Vanessa Fox showed up to tackle the answer:

Typically, web search results don’t add value to users, and since our
core goal is to provide the best search results possible, we generally
exclude search results from our web search index. (Not all URLs that
contains things like “/results” or “/search” are search results, of
course.)

I’ll take a look at the YouTube example. Thanks.

As a result of that question, YouTube added a “Disallow: /results” line in its robots.txt file. That’s good because as Google recrawls web pages, we’ll see that and begin to drop those search results.

Google already does similar things with our web search results, Froogle, etc. to try to prevent our web search results from causing problems for any other engines’ index. In general, we’ve seen that users usually don’t want to see search results (or copies of websites via proxies) in their search results. Proxied copies of websites and search results that don’t add much value already fall under our quality guidelines (e.g. “Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.” and “Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches…”), so Google does take action to reduce the impact of those pages in our index.

But just to close the loop on the original question on that thread and clarify that Google reserves the right to reduce the impact of search results and proxied copies of web sites on users, Vanessa also had someone add a line to the quality guidelines page. The new webmaster guideline that you’ll see on that page says “Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don’t add much value for users coming from search engines.”

This hasn’t been a burning issue for many people, and for people that pay attention to search I’m sure it’s a well-known fact (e.g. see here where someone asked me about a particular site copied via a proxy, and my reply later that day), but it’s still good to clarify that Google does reserve the right to take action to reduce search results (and proxied copies of websites) in our own search results.

Philipp, thanks for asking the question originally. It was good that you pointed out we had some of our own web search results showing (so that we could correct that), and it’s also good to make sure that site owners get clear guidance.

Many years ago there was a band called Transvision Vamp. And they did a song called Trash City. (”motivation for the spacin’ generation.”) And now every time I see the name of the Ask’ mega-business-local-searcha thing, AskCity, I hear the song Trash City. But that’s okay because the new tools Ask is offering for AskCity means I don’t mind hearing TV in my head instead of The Bell Rays.

AskCity, at http://city.ask.com/city , is a map application that allows you to search for local businesses, events, and movies. Just enter a keyword and a timespan. Make sure that you’re zoomed to the area that you want to search, because AskCity won’t search the entire US by default. I found just searching for city names did the most good.

Once you’ve found something of interest, then you’ll get to use those nifty drawing tools that Ask recently announced. You can draw shapes on the map which overlay their coverage area with a very slight shade — useful for pointing things out. However you can also search within the shapes you’ve drawn. You can search within an area covering several states or draw a straight line and search only a street. There’s also a freehand drawing tool and a tool for adding text.

You can put multiple shapes/lines on a map and search within each. And the shapes show up on the map view or on the aerial view. At certain levels you can take screen shots of the map and save them on the map page. (This worked well when I was at city level, but when I zoomed out pretty far and tried to take a screen shot Firefox almost crashed.)

Of course Ask has wrapped all this up with the ability to set permalinks or e-mail address information to friends. Very cool. The next time I have to generate a map or do some very narrow-level searching, this is where I’m going first.

Ingredients
- Something new
- Lots of food that you enjoy
- Your favorite drink
- An interesting social place

Directions
Go shop for something new – something cool, make sure that you love it. Then have lots of food, for dinner preferably, as the times of breakfast and lunch are to be avoided. Consider also including a new, hot taste, and one of your favorite drinks. Then go to an interesting place, it could be a movie, a concert, a party, or any other social place. Having fun, and optionally getting drunk, is also part of the recipe. Note that you should avoid any unnecessary actions, as they can occasionally trigger feelings of unhappiness. Ideally the recipe should be served on a Saturday, for maximum happiness effect. If all this happens on your birthday, even better. Bon appétit!

Spotted this at Aaron Swartz’s blog, from someone who claims to be working at Google:

<<Does NOBODY out there realize that LESS THAN HALF of the 10,000+ employees are engineers and programmers???

MOST PEOPLE who work at Google are in SUPPORT roles!! And they are getting paid way less than industry standard for working 50, 60+ hours a week for it! Screw the free food, screw the laundry – the MAJORITY of people working at Google are in buildings without any of these amenities, and are certainly without extra money from stock options. (...)

[T]hey are the ones working their asses off, in overtime, but that doesn’t matter because they are salaried but way below industry standards for support positions, to make sure that YOU, the user, has an accessible Help Center, has a kind, email response, has an answer to your question.

Yes, there are foosball tables in the support buildings, but who has time to play them? Giant overhead projectors alerting them to the current turnaround time for their emails is Big Brother enough to ensure that they don’t even THINK about playing foosball when they should be answering support emails. (...)

I’ve been here almost 5 years, and as soon as my refresher grant has vested, I am out like Lance Bass. It’s a load of corporate baloney – the 400-person company that I started at has become a nightmare that has eaten my soul. God help the users.>>

I don’t know whether or not this is true, but it’s an interesting counterweight to all the mainstream reports on Google that follow the “everyone there gets free food, can work 20% on hobby projects, and sits on bouncy balls next to lava lamps” pattern... which may be more describing the engineers at Google (and I bet even many of them are so overworked that they don’t always know where to squeeze in that 20% time). If you’re working at Google or have friends there I appreciate your inside view in the comments.

[Image courtesy of Google.]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

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How's that new workout routine going? Whether you're just getting started or not, all of us at one time or the other will probably overdo it, but there are ways to prevent those ouchy muscles, including:

• Gently stretch each muscle group for at least 60 seconds before and after your workouts
• Hydrate! Lots of water or an electrolyte containing sports drink
• Ice the worked muscle group immediately after especially hard workouts

We've blogged about preventing sore muscles before, but this is a good reminder. One thing that always works for me: a casual stroll for about ten minutes after a good workout seems to banish any lingering soreness (and gives me time to pat myself on the back for actually, you know, working out.). — Wendy Boswell

• Alpha Geek: Copy TV shows to your iPod
  "So Apple wants you to pony up $1.99 per episode of Heroes when you're already paying the cable company for it? Nuh-uh. Don't think so. Seems like you should be able to copy that show--or any other--from your media center PC or TiVo right to your iPod."
• Hack Attack: Sync your Greasemonkey scripts across computers
  "Today I'll detail how to use the cross platform program FolderShare to keep your Greasemonkey scripts in perfect sync across your Firefox browsers and computers (Windows and/or Mac)."
• Geek to Live: Organize your PDF library with iTunes
  "Yes, I know iTunes isn't a document organizer, but it does a surprisingly good job at it anyway. Using iTunes' Smart Playlists and its PDF support, you can build a document library where PDF's are automatically sorted into keyword-based lists."
• Screenshot Tour: Manage your virtual desktop with Virtue Desktops
  "For a detailed rundown of and look at VirtueDesktop's impressive feature set, check out the gallery."
• Print your own lens hood
  "The site carries custom hoods for upwards of a hundred different lenses, including models from Canon, Nikon, Olympus and Sigma."
• Download of the Day: Videora iPod Converter (Windows)
  "Convert nearly any video file to an iPod-friendly format with Videora iPod Converter."
• Lifehacker Code: Clipboard2Phone (Windows)
  "Zap that phone number, grocery list or set of driving directions directly from your PC desktop to your cell phone with Clipboard2Phone."
• Save time reading on your Mac with Summarize
  "Summarize, a handy but relatively unknown entry in your Mac's services menu creates a precise summary of the highlighted text in your current application."
• Firefox Tweak: Stop resizing large images
  "If you don't mind the scrollbars and want all your pixels unresized, in about:config, set browser.enable_automatic_image_resizing to false."
• Enable Netflix Watch Now movie streaming on any account
  "If you've been eagerly awaiting the day that you can try streaming Netflix videos straight to your computer, but their new "Watch Now" feature still isn't enabled on your account, your wait is over."
• Hack Google Maps URLs to zoom way in
  "...manipulate Google Maps URLs to zoom in close enough to see an individual camel in the middle of Africa."

I’m always looking for tips on link building and am a fan of using directory links as part of the overall link building mix; usually somewhere around 3-5%.

Directories are probably the oldest form of link and traffic building, dating back to Yahoo!, DMOZ, and Go.com’s directory efforts.

They are also still an important part of Internet marketing in terms of site categorization via co citation, establishing a reputation by being listed with the best sites on the web, and establishing some core anchor text which still has ranking influence.

But besides the major directories, how do you decide which directory or category best fits your site and/or is deserving of having your site listed?

John Scott of v7n has an interesting theory of taking the average PageRank of the sites listed in a category and if that average is more than a PageRank 4, chances are that listing would have more quality than a listing in a directory category with an average outbound PageRank of 3 or below.

From Scott’s post; Web Directory AuthorityRank - Average Outbound PR

Average PR of Outbound Links can be seen by going to a category, and checking the PR of all links on that page.

For example, this page… contains the following outbound links, with the following PR:

http://www.bizrate.com/ - PR8
http://www.edealsuk.com/ - PR4
http://www.pricegrabber.com/ - PR8
http://wwww.shopping.com/ - PR8
http://www.uksave.net/ - PR5

As you can see, this particular category has a average PR [an average outbound PageRnak of 7] that is fairly high.

Interesting directory link building tactic. Scott also adds another tip:

In order to forecast how a page will fare in Google, I do two things. First, check the descriptions. If a lot of the descriptions are duplicate content, then the web directory probably does not have editorial integrity and Google most likely knows it.

Another way to evaluate the worth of a directory is via tools like SEOmoz’s PageStrength.

Aviva (which is also a directory) has put together a list of directories as ranked by SEOmoz PageStrength. The list has been around for a while, but was updated and I think is worth revisiting; What are the Strongest Directories?

How do you measure the value of directories and the sites you build links on?

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Adam Parikh found Google providing search numbers for keywords in their Adwords Keyword Tool and posted the screen shot at his blog

Interesting... and a godsend to those of us that do intense PPC marketing with Google. Nice find Adam!

Anyone else find this? If so let us know.

Actually I have Flixfind to thank for this site, it was mentioned on their blog. Adverlicio.us, at http://adverlicio.us , is a neat directory of online advertising. Not static banner advertising, but those animated, Flash-based ads.

You can search, but the site also makes it easy to browse through a huge tag cloud (from 160×600 to Wireless Phone) and browse through ads in several categories — Culture and Entertainment, Retail, Technology, etc. Categories also have subcategories as well.

Ads are placed three to a page and show the ad itself, a star rating (you can vote for ads), and the tags associated with the ad. If you click on the ad title you can get a page for that ad which also has a voting form. Sometimes ads had comment forms available and sometimes they didn’t — I wasn’t able to discern a pattern. Ad pages also have an “If you liked this ad you’ll love these…” sidebar that helps browsing a lot.

If you don’t want to browse you can use the search engine that allows you to do simple keyword searches narrowed down by topic/size.

In addition to the browsing and searching, Adverlicio.us also has some special ad sets available for browsing — Super Bowl ads, Apple ads, and ads for LowerMyBills (you might not recognize the company name, but you’ll recognize the ads instantly if you do any amount of browsing.) It was fun to browse for a while and see how far online advertising has come — and to think, not an invitation to punch a monkey to be found….

(Of course, for those of you who actually miss those “Punch a Monkey” type advertisement, some enterprising human created a whole gallery of them…)

This post came from ResearchBuzz, a site with news and information about online data collections. Visit us at ResearchBuzz.com .

After thinking more about the enhancements to Google's Local Business Center, I realized a benefit that was overlooked in one of the less glamorous feature developments amongst the set.

As reported in a post earlier this week, one of the developments to Local Business Center is the ability for businesses to change or edit their location on a Google map if it is incorrect or outdated.

At first I thought this will find a marginal amount of utility for businesses and Google alike. Then I remembered something about local online mapping; the last block problem. This occurs when a mapping engine places a business or residence on a map based on its address; but the best it can do with that address is extrapolate its position within a given block.

Bloomberg is running an article which quotes Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s stance on media companies and their reluctance to upload content on YouTube, despite its popularity and demand by YouTube users to view copyrighted content.

“Eventually all of the copyrighted content will be available on virtually all of the sites,” said Schmidt, who is tussling over copyrights with Viacom Inc. “The growth of YouTube, the growth of online, is so fundamental that these companies are going to be forced to work with and in the Internet,” Schmidt said in an interview at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California.

YouTube is essentially blossoming into the new preferential media in the same manner the Nixon-Kennedy debate put television on the map in 1960 and cable rocked the telecommunications world in the ’80’s.

If media companies do not see that now and ignore it’s popularity, will it hurt them in the long run and will they lose a generation of viewers?

Or will demand to view segments of the Daily Show or Yo’ Mama lead to an even stronger online video site in Joost.com?

The success of YouTube has networks divided on whether the benefits of putting up clips outweigh the risk of cannibalizing their own efforts. CBS Corp. this week called YouTube a “huge promotional vehicle.” Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman said unauthorized videos on the site hurt his company.

Read the full overview at Bloomberg : Google’s Schmidt Says Media Companies Need YouTube

I love and use the GmailThis bookmarklet at least once a day, whether I'm emailing an article to a friend or bookmarking a web site with Gmail. But since I love me some keyword bookmarks and I love shortcutting things as thin as I can get them, today I'm releasing the Supercharged GmailThis bookmarklet.

At first glance, the bookmarklet doesn't work any differently from the original. If you click the bookmarklet, it'll open up a compose window in Gmail with the page's title in the subject, along with the link and any highlighted text quoted in the body. But it gets more fun from there. Once set up as a keyword bookmarklet, you can use this bookmarklet to add tags to the subject, re-write the subject altogether, add text to the body of the email, and add a recipient to your email all from your address bar.

Supercharged GmailThis Bookmarklet

Version: 0.1
Last updated: 3/8/2007
Author: Adam Pash

What it does: If you're familiar with keyword bookmarks (which I use extensively), you can set up the Supercharged GmailThis bookmarklet to do a lot more. First, drag this GmailThis bookmarklet to your browser's toolbar. Next, right-click the bookmarklet and select Properties, then add a Keyword for the bookmarklet (I use gmt). Now you can do a bit more with your bookmarklet.

Namely, you can add text after your keyword bookmarklet to customize what ends up in your auto-composed Gmail window. You can separate your subject or tags, body text, and recipient by a series of pipes (|) to instantly compose your Gmail message via bookmarklet. Here's how it works:

gmt Subject text or @tags | Body Text | Recipient

If I sent this page with this bookmarklet, I could type gmt @bookmarklets | This could come in very useful | me, and I'd get a Gmail compose window with the title of this page followed by - @bookmarklets as my subject (e.g., "Lifehacker Code: Supercharged GmailThis Bookmarklet - Lifehacker - @bookmarklets"), then "This could come in very useful" in my body followed by quoted text (if I selected any) and the link, and finally, it would be addressed to "me", which would automatically jump to my personal email address in the Gmail auto-complete drop-down once the window loads (you can use partial email addresses in the third field just like you would in Gmail, since once the compose window loads it'll automatically jump to the first match).

Whenever you write tags appended with the @ sign in the first field, your subject text will contain both the web page's title and the tags. However, if you use no @ tags, your first field of text will replace the web page title as the subject.

I know this may not be of use to everyone, but as someone who does most of his web page bookmarking with Gmail and filters, the ability to tag pages like this is really handy. The rest, to be honest, is mostly for fun.

That is to say, I use it, but I can understand someone finding the whole process to be a lot easier if you just wait for the compose window to load and do your work there. I find the Supercharged GmailThis bookmarklet to be a handy, albeit small, time saver when I'm emailing web pages.

Installation: Drag and drop this GmailThis bookmarklet to your browser's toolbar. Set up a keyword as described above for advanced use.

Changelog:

• Version 0.1: Released.

Known Issues: Nothing serious to report. Unless your browser supports the %s variable (which, as far as I know, is Firefox-only), you won't see any difference between this and other GmailThis bookmarklets.

Bug reports and feature requests: Leave a comment here if you've got any feature requests or bug reports for the bookmarklet, which is in an "I threw this together and I enjoy it" alpha. — Adam Pash

Mad4MobilePhones looks at a patent filed by Google which includes predicting phone calls and actions based upon time and location and may be part of the upcoming Google Phone project.

The patent, Nonstandard locality-based text entry, was filed in 2005.

This patent is truly groundbreaking in what the application could do. Imagine that you are planning a night out in London.

• At 6pm Google could predict you are looking for a restaurant and, given your history of looking for directions to Chinese restaurants every week, would select an array of suitable places for you to eat.
• At 9pm you would turn your phone on again and Google would know you wanted bars near the restaurant.
• At 11pm Google again predicts you need a list of local taxi firms.

More from Patent: Google Phone knows what you want before you search.

Barry points to a Webmaster World thread which asks how long does Google send their crawlers to a page which begins serving a 404 error not found message?

According to Search Engine Roundtable & the thread, the answer is forever.

Google will continue to try to see if the 404ed page has ever been reinstated as a live page.

Google even provides these errors in Google Webmaster Central, where you can see web crawl errors including 404 not found errors.

Instead of serving a 404 error message which makes it look like your site is full of broken pages and links, it’s much better to customize your 404 error page with:

• A site map, or link to the site map and link to the homepage which will direct the crawler to the main content rich sections of your site.
• If you run a blog try aggregating your RSS or archive feed to serve links to the 5-10 most recent posts.
• A search box which will help your users find what they are looking for on the site.

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Today Terry Heaton posted about how inside sources have tipped him off about MySpace making a social news play, fortifying them as more of an informational and 2.0 oriented portal and hopefully bringing about some maturity to MySpace.

Of course, and despite what loyal Digg users may tell you, this is no “We want to be the next Digg!” scenario. MySpace is owned by Fox Interactive and Fox Interactive’s parent company is News Corp.

Essentially, MySpace is owned by one of, if not the, largest news media conglomerates on a global scale, so incorporating a social news aspect makes perfect sense.

Here’s an overview of MySpace’s news plans:

* MySpace News takes News to a whole new level by dynamically aggregating real-time news and blogs from top sites around the Web
* Creates focused, topical news pages that users can interact and engage with throughout their day
* MySpace is making the news social, allowing users to:
Rate and comment on every news item that comes through the system
Submit stories they think are cool and even author pieces from their MySpace blog
* MySpace users previously had to leave the site to find comprehensive news, gossip, sporting news, etc. With MySpace News, we bring the news to them!

It will be interesting to see how much play MySpace News will give to non-Fox properties (kind of like the initial coverage AOL’s Netscape gave to Weblogs Inc Blogs). I’d also like to see where MySpace mega-partner Google will come into the picture.

Will Fox Sports News outrank CNN/SI when reporting about steroids scandals or Super Bowl coverage?

Will Keith Olberman videos take the backseat to Bill O’Reilly?

These questions won’t be answered until MySpace News launches, but with their new directions in free Fox television episodes and MySpace Video hoping to rival YouTube, a social news channel is the practical next step; especially with a maturing and aging MySpace userbase.

Kevin Lee wraps up his PPC advertisers' wishlist for search engines in his ClickZ column today. Included in the final installment are a way to bid-boost Google's ads that appear on AOL, more click-specific data passed by URL, and better customer communications.

As I was driving all over “God’s creation” today, from meeting to meeting, there were a number of interesting developments and announcements. The first concerned the enhancements to the Google Local Business Center. Barry Schwartz has a terrific, thorough overview of each of the new features:

• Add photos to your Google Maps listing
• Add custom (data) attributes to your business listings
• Correct and adjust your Google map marker location, so if it is slightly off, you can move it to the right spot
• You can now see statistics on how many people viewed and clicked on your local business listings

Like all things Google, this seeks to accomplish multiple goals. Among them:

• Enhance the listings data with additional information (i.e., hours, etc.) and imagery
• Create a more accurate database generally
• Prove value to SMBs and bring them into the fold of AdWords advertisers (if they’re not already)

Google gets data from multiple providers today (commercial database vendors, verticals, SMB “aggregators” and consumer sites) and arguably has as good or better a local database than any that exists. This is an effort to push it further. Indeed, the only way to get truly accurate and fresh data is not to rely on exclusively third parties but to get it directly from the businesses themselves, which of course is difficult.

While many businesses will welcome these enhancements it raises the familiar challenge with SMBs: push vs. pull. Google can afford to take the long view given its market and cash positions. Yet I believe that if Google made the effort with the Local Business Center it’s now making with Checkout it would see a faster growth curve.

While the Google home page is sacrosanct, “advertising programs” and “business solutions” could be consolidated into a single link and Google could replace one of them with “Local Business Center,” if only temporarily, which could also function as a doorway into Google’s simplified “Starter Edition” of AdWords.

-

Greg Sterling is the founding principal of Sterling Market Intelligence, a consulting and research firm focused on online consumer and advertiser behavior and the relationship between the Internet and traditional media, with an emphasis on the local marketplace.

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Google China launched a new web/ web navigation directory at daohang.google.cn (see the automated translation), Chinese Gseeker reports. The directory (a Google Labs product that didn’t make it onto the Chinese homepage yet) includes sections such as search, video, communities, games or music sites.

The site allowed me to do some configuration – you can move categories up and down – but most settings were lost after closing and re-opening the browser. I’m not sure if that’s intentional, or just buggy (another feature where I wasn’t sure about that was that every link opened a new window... including those links that are already in secondary windows).

Can anyone speaking Chinese explain more, e.g. what the FAQ says? For instance, from what little I understand with Google’s auto-translation, the directory is partly ranked dynamically.

PS: If you had any doubts how important China’s huge user base is in Google’s global strategy, just look at the number of releases that seem to be exclusive to Google China lately... like a Chinese homepage suggestion feature including Pinyin translation, the temporarily available Rebang site, and now this new directory service.

[Thanks Ken Wong in the forum!]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

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SEO Clinic, the free SEO recommendation and review service where Search Engine Journal editors and special guest SEO experts help sites better their rankings, usability and overall search marketing presence, is going to be running as a bi-weekly column here on Search Engine Journal.

This week, we helped TechSmith, a screen capture and web video company, better their overall SEO and it should most definitely help with their rankings.

The next SEO Clinic will run on March 20th and will focus on a special site with an emphasis on blog optimization, using public relations for link building and SEO, and the clinic will be helping a unique individual fulfill his dream.

If you’d like to submit your site to the SEJ SEO Clinic, please fill out the form below:

In the meantime, we’re working on some new and exciting columns here at Search Engine Journal and will be announcing them shortly, so stay tuned!

What people are saying about SEO Clinic:

Steven Bradley:

If there’s one thing you can say about the SEO Clinic review, it’s that the review is thorough…. while the this first review tends to focus on what would be considered seo 101 there are some pretty good ideas to generate natural links and make use of social media sites. Overall it’s a good look into the minds of some successful SEOs and how they would approach the problem of optimizing a site.

Michael Martinez:

That was one of the most thorough, informative online analyses I have read in a very, very long time.

David Jonah:

This is a phenomenal idea and execution with real tangible value. In a world of me too SEO commentators and duplication resource articles searching for a new angle, which should be ironic on some level, this is unique, valuable, innovative, and refreshing.

David Temple :

Great job everybody. It was especially interesting to see what a well established site can do to improve.

Reader Diane needs an appointment-scheduling panacea:

I manage a college writing center where we have over 20 staff members, each with hourly appointments. I am completely sick of dealing with the sloppy, inconvenient paper schedules we have and am looking for a free software program that I can use to manage the daily appointments of multiple people. Any ideas?

Google Calendar is the first thing that leaps to my mind, but that might be a little unwieldy for managing that many appointments for that many people. What do you think, Lifehackers? Help Diane out in the comments. — Rick Broida

Google Video has a new category on the homepage: “blog buzz,” showing the blogosphere’s most discussed videos. (Likely, this covers Google Video and YouTube content only, albeit YouTube dominates the top 10 exclusively at this time.)

The current top 3 videos are:

• Madonna H&M advert (director’s cut)
• ’93 Giuliani ad with Donna Hanover and kids
• My Chemical Romance UK Single - I Don’t Love You

For every video link, you can also click on a small text icon next to it to go Google Blog Search to follow the discussion of the video.

Join the ongoing comments.

[Hat tip to Sander and Ionut!]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post]

[Advertisement] Bloggers, increase your ad revenue: make contextual ad networks compete (for free).   [Advertise here]

The New York Times is once again breathlessly heralding the "launch" of a Google-killer.

Back in January, the NYT covered Powerset and Hakia in "Looking for the next Google." In today's story, "Start-Up Aims for Database to Automate Web Searching," the NYT covers Metaweb Technologies' plans to create a semantic Web database, to be called Freebase, which founder Danny Hillis envisions as "a centralized repository that is more like a digital almanac."

It's being billed as a cross between a search engine and a database, which would mean that its goals will be similar to those of Google Base -- adding structure to data that otherwise does not have structure, and letting content owners edit that metadata.

"It’s like a system for building the synapses for the global brain," Tim O'Reilly, CEO of O'Reilly Media, is quoted as saying in the NYT story. O'Reilly talks about Freebase on his blog, where he is a bit more cautiously optimistic than the NYT, saying, "While freebase is still VERY alpha, with much of the basic functionality barely working, the idea is HUGE." O'Reilly does a great job covering what Freebase could be, once it is built.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not judging Freebase (or Hakia or Powerset, for that matter). I'm just saying that covering someone's great idea as if it was already in place is misleading, and unfair both to readers and the company itself, who now must face the constant pressure to complete their project as fast as possible, instead of waiting to start the hype closer to the launch of an actual working product.

Of course, these companies agreed to the interviews, so they're not innocent in this hype-fest. I'm intrigued by the concept, and look forward to learning more about it – once it exists.

Technical accident enrages local mayor

The mayor of the German town of Bad Toelz, Germany, is angry with Google Earth for its reference to a nearby "Mount Hitler".…

I absolutely LOVE the Picasa software (I haven't opened Photoshop for personal photos in ages) and the Picasa Web Albums is a nice service.

But is it just me or is the one thing Google seems to have a hard time getting a good feel for is personalization and social networking? Sure they bought YouTube, but they didn't build it or its user-base; nor have they really had it long enough to leave their mark on it. Blogger is arguably the best product in their line-up where they finally appear to be getting a better feel for this aspect.

The interface and integration with Picasa (and now Blogger) is very nice. But IMO it just doesn't seem to encourage social interaction or browsing through networks of friends, groups, tags, etc. Like a lot of Google products, it just comes across as rather cold and clinical. Functional? Absolutely - just like most Google products. But fun or personable (which is more important for things like photos and video v/s maps and email)?? I guess that's a matter of opinion, but I just don't get that vibe from it yet.

All platforms running Firefox: The Gmail Manager Firefox add-on obviates the need to keep your Gmail open in a tab all the time by displaying your email info in a statusbar pop-up, as shown.

If you've got more than one Gmail account, the Gmail Manager can show you information from all of them, too. The extension is highly customizable - you can show unread message counts in all labels or just the Inbox, and in the case of multiple accounts, set it to automatically switch to the one with new mail. I can't believe we haven't featured Gmail Manager before, as several readers have mentioned it in the comments, and this one might well go on my must-have extension list. Gmail Manager is a free download that runs in conjunction with and wherever Firefox does. — Gina Trapani

Sergey Brin is telling employees to stop making old products and start improving new ones. "For example, said Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, Google plans to combine its spreadsheet, calendar and word-processing programs into one suite of Web-based applications."

The King condescended to visit a surgical clinic and came on the professor as he was carrying out the amputation of a leg. He accompanied all its stages with loud expressions of his royal satisfaction: 'Bravo! bravo! my dear professor!' When the operation was finished, the professor approached him and asked him with a deep bow: 'It is your Majesty's command that I should remove the other leg too?'

FRIENDSHIP, n. Having no favors to bestow. Destitute of fortune. Addicted to utterance of truth and common sense.

FROG, n. A reptile with edible legs.

Google announced today that it has added a few new features to its Local Business Center, the place where businesses can enter their information in order to show up on Google Maps.

New features include the ability to upload or edit photos that accompany business listings. Businesses can also now select what category they fall in to (restaurant, hotel, plumber, etc.) and list “custom attributes” specific to their category such as "service area" or "check out time". Businesses can also change or correct their location if they move. Interestingly, the new features include analytics that allow businesses to get a free look at the clicks they have generated on Google Maps.

Read/WriteWeb has the scoop on the new MyYahoo personalized homepage which has gone ‘Web 2.0′ and includes a hovering Ajax powered RSS reader!

Beta test the new MyYahoo now!

Here are the other features:

* pre-built personalized page for each user, based on data Yahoo has already gleaned from their usage of Yahoo properties - the design of the page is closely aligned with yahoo.com;
* Category pages for topics such as cooking, plus “content suggestions”;
* Users can further customize their page with drag-and-drop modules, and new four-column and small search box layouts;
* Feed previews and a full post reader on the page;
* Editable Personal Assistant with instant access to things like Yahoo! Mail, horoscopes, local traffic, etc;
* Redesigned modules from Yahoo! and select partners, with games, music, commerce, sports updates, weather, finance portfolios, TV listings, etc;
* Sharing feature, enabling users to send their My Yahoo! page or favorite modules to friends and family - note, this is very similar to Pageflakes’ sharing feature, only Yahoo told me that their sharing service doesn’t require sign-ups;
* More “new interactive modules” to come

A screencast of the new MyYahoo is also available from the MyYahoo Team.

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Google is continuing to turn into the MTV of search with more and more video additions to the Google experience.

Last week YouTube hosted videos began popping up in Google search results under Google Video Plusboxes and now Google Finance is hosting finanical news videos on its homepage.

Each day, you’ll find a variety of videos from leading news organizations on the Google Finance homepage. You can stay up-to-date on the markets with the video news sources you trust.

I just loaded up Google Finance and the current videos are via Reuters, Forbes and Standard & Poors. For a full list of video sources, see the entire Google Finance Videos for today.

Advertisement: Text Link Ads Smart Link Marketing

Here are some tips on using photos, screenshot or illustrative images in your blog:

1. Use Flickr’s Creative Commons search to find photos. You can then include these photos in your blog, and mention the Creative Commons license as well as the original photographer to give proper credit. (If you have a Creative Commons license for your blog as well, you can additionally use photos with a share-alike license, so it’s a good idea to add CC to your blog.) Wikipedia lists some other free-to-share images resources.
2. Use larger zoom images for those images that people may want to get a close-up of, but don’t necessarily use the exact same image. Usually, a thumbnail version of an image has different “cropping needs”, so the large version is not just larger, but may also show more context, and in higher quality (sometimes, when you use high quality you can later on re-use other parts of the image in a new blog posts that discusses something related).
3. Think of the future – you’re creating an archive. What’s the purpose of including a screenshot of a website your readers will see anyway if they follow your link? Well, there are two uses of including such a screenshot, I think: 1) this helps give a visual context to your blog post, which is good when people visit your blog everyday trying to read only your new posts (people easily remember the photos they’ve seen when scrolling down on your frontpage), and 2) your blog post will be available years from now, when the site in question may have already been redesigned, or possibly, taken down completely. Why not aid future visitors by becoming a kind of digital museum?
4. Upload to your own server, or use secondary servers at your own risk. Some people upload everything to Flickr or similar services. But what if Flickr changes their terms, or is down, or slow, or does something other annoying? Then you got a problem because you outsourced a crucial part of your blog. Of course, uploading to another server may bring other benefits – e.g. you can use that service’s tagging engine, or add notes to the picture, or easily provide different zoom levels – so it’s also a matter of taste which way to go.
5. Sometimes a photo is not enough, so create videos if you want to demonstrate interaction. If you review a website, especially if it’s in a closed beta phase and not easily accesibly to everyone, it’s sometimes nice to provide a video of as well. (I’m using the free Windows Media Encoder for these needs – the quality to file-size relation is incredible, though the output is unfortunately WMV only.)
6. Provide enough context in your photo (but not more). When you’re photographing a product, it makes sense to include some environment that shows the product size in relation (e.g. in relation to a hand). When you’re including a screenshot, it makes sense to include some environment of whatever it is you’re discussing in that screenshot, so those who see it understand the position of that thing you’re emphasizing. On the other hand, don’t include too much context, as the detail you want to emphasize may get lost.
7. Use iconic images. An icon is used to create continuity for a specific topic of your blog’s content. (For example, I’m using some kind of Gmail icon here when I’m discussing Gmail.) An icon is not representing something specific but something abstract, and it helps people more easily (visually) categorize your post. Use something recognizable and understandable, but be careful not to be trapped in graphic clichees – e.g. a mouse cursor or @-symbol is a clichee of print media to represent “the internet”, but it’s also tiresome to see it repeated over and over for years. If you’re looking for clip arts to use, the Open Clip Art Library website is the hands down best resource I’ve found so far, and their images are actually in the public domain (meaning you don’t even have to credit them, which is good for images you want to use repeatedly – because repeating the credit everytime adds clutter to your posts).
8. If you’re writing a news blog, clearly label mock-ups. Make sure that every mocked-up product or service screenshot is clearly labeled as such in the text. There are some exceptions to this rule when the “fakeness” of the image is 100% clear, but they’re not as frequent as you (as creator of the visuals) may think. For example, when you show off an image of Steve Jobs in superhero clothes flying over a city made up of Macs (just as a random for-instance!) then it’s rather obvious this is a mock-up, and it doesn’t need a label. But in many other cases, being too liberal with using unlabeled fake images may cause people to a) take it for the real thing, or b) question your future, real photos.
9. Use the right compression. Images these days come in three flavors: GIF, JPEG or PNG. Choosing which file-type is appropriate for which kind of image is a science in itself, but in a nutshell, use JPEG for photos or complex images with natural texture, and use PNG for line art, cartoons, or not-so-complex screenshots, and just forget about GIFs (unless your older images are still GIFs, in the case of which you can of course continue to use them). If you can, reduce the PNG to 256 colors to save some bandwidth and make your posts load faster. When you compress the JPEG, use a value that creates an image that loads fast but is also not “visually annoying”: if important details are coming off very blurry in your image, it’s better to increase the JPEG quality. I’m currently trying to go for something like 10-40K per image per post, but of course this depends on a variety of factors (your audience, the overall size of your frontpage, the kind of image) and I don’t think there are any hard rules for this.
10. You don’t need to be an artist: the spirit counts. I think the value of a blog post greatly increases when the author takes time to produce an image for you. It doesn’t have to look great as long as it communicates an idea more clearly, thus saving your readers time and providing them with a “bridge” to your text. The longer your text, the more necessity for such an image.
11. Either your blog is Safe-For-Work or it’s Not-Safe-For-Work (“NSFW”) – make up your mind. You need to decide whether or not your blog contains adult imagery or not. It doesn’t help if you only post adult imagery every once in a while (or use titles like “NSFW”), because visitors simply don’t know when that “once in a while” will be and they may want to open up your blog in an office environment where the boss walks close-by. If you decide your blog is regularly NSFW that’s OK too, as people will be prepared. (NSFW Fleshbot for example.) Note that your text can contain adult themes every once in a while, as letters are too small to be made out by nosy bosses!
12. Separate screenshots from your text. Make sure your images posted will not be confused with your normal text flow. For example, when you copy a screenshot containing nothing but black-on-white text, add a border to the screenshot, down-size the screenshot so the text will get anti-aliased, and give the whole thing a slightly darker background (for instance).
13. Illustrate your point with doodles! If you have a scanner, or a Wacom pen, you can create quick black-on-white sketches to clarify your point. It will take you longer to create a post, but it will be quicker for your readers to understand your point. Like point 10, I believe the spirit counts; similar to sketching something on the whiteboard during a presentation, you don’t need to be an artist to get the point across. Besides, visualizing your idea helps you to flesh it out more precisely, and better reflect on the issue you’re discussing.
14. Don’t hotlink images from other servers. If you’re a developer, this one is probably obvious to you: including image URLs that point to another server (I’m talking about a server with which you don’t have some kind of membership relation) puts your site at great risk. Not only may you annoy another webmaster, and not only may the image you’re linking to be removed... what’s worse is that someone now has “power” over your blog and can replace their image with e.g. a shocking image that will suddenly display on your frontpage.
15. Use a white background, or use another color at your own risk. Unfortunately, the still-important Internet Explorer 6 doesn’t support varied transparency levels for PNG images, so when you want to show an illustration that contains e.g. a shadow smoothly flowing into your post’s background color, you need to include a specific background color in the image. What this means is that when you’re using say a soft yellow background color on your blog and your images, you can’t easily change the background color of your blog during a later redesign – because most images would look weird. That’s why the safest way is to use a white background color, as that may have the best chances of surviving the test of time. (There are more advanced solutions to this problem, like including Flash that renders images for you, but none are really easy to implement, let alone free of side-effects.) Another bonus is that many places your post will be republished will also have a white background color – at least the chances for that being the case are higher than them featuring your exact shade of yellow.

There’s an exception to every rule, of course. Above are just general rules of thumb: for example, you ought not provide a zoom image if it breaks “fair use” in cases where you don’t own the image content. Or perhaps you’re doing a quick post from an internet cafe and you don’t have the right tools to prepare and upload the image, so you can hotlink to another domain for a couple of days and then replace the image once you have time. Or maybe you have a satire blog, so you clearly don’t want to disclose all your mockups as such. Or maybe you’ve written a longer essay and you feel that any image would only distract from its complex point, so then you may want to leave it blank... and so on.

Got more tips?

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

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Google Maps added images to info boxes. This only works for some locations, not all. For example, you can search for googleplex, mountain view and then click the red marker labeled “g”, the “Computer History Museum.” A window pops up showing the entrance ...

...and if you expand the info box you can see additional photos (they’re from Yelp.com in this case). Neat!

[Via Google’s blogs.]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

[Advertisement] Bloggers, increase your ad revenue: make contextual ad networks compete (for free).   [Advertise here]

1001 Widgets now at Opera.

Google releases a new Desktop.

Jenny’s into DDR! Woo hoo!. Just to add something to her comment about pads. You can if you want buy a DDR pad with a foam back, and they’re pretty good. I found, however, that modding a pad by mounting it to 3/4″ plywood and covering it with hardwood floor covering makes something extremely sturdy. The only drawback is that you can no longer fold it. Details and pictures at http://www.ddrfreak.com/library/contributor-article.php?postID=7890244. I modded a pad (a cheapo generic DDR pad) like this and it lasted over three years. (How come they don’t have DDR at Computers in Libraries? What a rip.)

Microsoft announces a new imaging file format. HD Photo.

Digital archives and the UC Libraries: http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/local/states/california/16843158.htm .

Blogs Build an Audience by Promoting Rivals Finds Yale School of Management Study

Take Flickr photos and turn them into comics: http://comicjuice.com/ .

When users get what they want from you quickly and easily, they’re more likely to come back next time. (Shh. Don’t tell anyone else this vital secret.) Part of that is feeling that they aren’t “trapped”–that they can leave you behind if they want.

That’s why I was happy about Eric Schmidt’s quote from the Web 2.0 conference last year. He spoke against trapping users’ data so that they can’t get to it. Dan Farber covered the interview:

“We build a very good targeting engine and a lot of business success has come from that. We run the company around the users–so as long as we are respecting the rights of end users and make sure we don’t do anything against their interest, we are fine,” Schmidt said. He noted that history has shown that the downfall of companies can be doing things for their own self interest. “We would never trap user data,” he said.

Schmidt was asked if users could get all of their search history and export it to Yahoo. “We would like to do that, as long as it is authenticated….If users can switch it keeps us honest.”

(emphasis mine) I love that Eric said this. It echoes the “send your users away happy and they’ll come back” philosophy. It also gives guidance to teams at Google.

So I started making a list of the ways that Google lets you access your data:

- Gmail. This one’s easy. Google provides free POP access so that anyone can fetch their email out of Gmail.

- Search. If you sign in with your Google account to search, Google can offer not only personalized search but also let you retrieve your search history. Mihai Parparita did some digging a while ago, for example. The ability to securely access your search history as an RSS feed is documented in our help pages now. For example, the url https://www.google.com/searchhistory/?output=rss works very well if you’re logged into your Google account. You’ll get an RSS feed back like this:

I believe you can add things like “&num=250″ so that you don’t have to access 10 items at a time either. This feature is secured by password-protection (you have to be logged in), but it provides a nice way to access your own searches. Oh, and don’t forget to try out your personal search trends. If you’re logged in, the url is http://www.google.com/psearch/trends and you’ll get all sorts of neat data like your most frequent searches, clicks, and when you tend to search:

Okay, enough about search. Let’s look at some other products that let you get to your data easily.

- Google Docs and Spreadsheets let you export your stuff in more formats than I know: Word, Rich Text Format, CSV, HTML, XLS (Excel), and PDF. Even one I didn’t know: .ods? Ah, OpenOffice. Nice.

- Google Calendar. Also easy. From its launch, Google calendar has allowed iCal (.ics) and RSS export of calendar data.

- Google Talk uses the open XMPP protocol. The VoIP part of Google Talk is done with Jingle, another open protocol that Google helped with. I like that our IM chat is open to other clients, so you can talk from iChat and GAIM to Trillian Pro and Blackberries.

- Google Reader easily exports your list of feeds in OPML format, and can import OPML files as well.

- Blogger. Blogger can export data via FTP or SFTP and backup your blog.

- Google AdWords. I don’t use AdWords myself, but Google provides a free application called the AdWords Editor, and its features include a snapshot export feature: “Save a delimited file with your AdWords account information and show it to a colleague or keep it for reference.” So I’m assuming it’s not too hard to suck down your AdWords info. Yup, a couple minutes of searching found references to importing your Google ad campaigns into Microsoft and Yahoo.

- Google Groups. I was dreading checking on this one. Back in August, someone wrote to me and said “I run a Google Group with 7,500+ subscribers and I need to download the subscriber list, but I don’t see an option for that.” It turns out that we didn’t offer that as a feature back in August. We were able to help the fellow, but it didn’t sound like an often-requested feature, so I didn’t think the Groups team had gotten a chance to do this. But I checked and it looks like the Groups team got a chance to add this. Yay! For a group I owned, I clicked “Manage” and then “Browse membership list.” At the bottom right will be a button “Export member list” and clicking that will download a comma-separated value (CSV) file.

- Let’s see, where else can you store data at Google? Ah, a Custom Search Engine. There’s even a bookmarklet to let you add sites to your custom search engine as you surf the web. Can you get your entire list of sites exported from your Custom Search Engine? Yup. Go to your search engine’s control panel and click on the “Advanced” tab. You’ll get options to download your sites in XML or tab-separated value (TSV) file format.

- Lots of products like Google Analytics and the Google Webmaster Console also give options to export data in various formats.

Okay, so looking down this list, it looks like Google does pretty well in offering open access to your data, at least for all the important services that I checked. If you know of some way that Google doesn’t let you download your data, please feel free to mention it. I like that Eric said this, because it’s a really nice precedent to set.