Posted by randfish

Like 150 million or so other folks, I spent today watching the Superbowl. As a marketer, it's hard not to pay close attention to the advertisements, and this year featured a heavy focus on sending viewers to the web. However, I was a bit surprised that we didn't see anything like 2007's Pontiac advertisement:

At the end of the ad, Pontiac invites viewers to "Google" their brand to learn more. This seemed a bit odd in 2007, but today, it would have been a brilliant marketing move. Here's why:

Personalized search is now on by default. This means that every click, branded search, and expression of a "brand preference" or "brand affinity" in Google's results is likely to result in preferential biasing towards that domain in future searches. A "Google" Pontiac message during this Superbowl wouldn't just send users to their site, it would also mean that tens of millions of searchers would now be "personalized" towards that domain.

I'm not sure when we'll start to see this strategy employed, but it can't be long. Personalization (and even social search, which Google pushed out of Labs two weeks ago) make leveraging your brand, in any channel, a powerful tool for SEO.

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Posted by RobOusbey

Attributes

Anchor Text

Example & Obvious Hint

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Posted by mgalecki

This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

A SHORT INTRODUCTION...

We all know that the search engine robots more frequently visit popular pages, i.e. those that have the largest number of incoming links, both internal and external ones. The architecture of a website is usually correlated with the popularity of these pages expressed by number of backlinks:

The above mentioned “importance” of web pages versus the web site architecture has been illustrated in one of the Rand's posts titled "Diagrams for Solving Crawl Priority & Indexation Issues":

Important pages tend to have a different priority of indexation, and this was also presented very nicely by Rand:

Purple spots are those with the highest number of external links. As it can be seen, the pages which are close, take some of the popularity and they pass part of it further (pink spots). All the other spots stand for pages that are too far from the entrance points of search engine robots, which means that the chance of their indexation is much smaller.

In case of classified websites, which contain a lot of content, the above diagram should include subsequent category listing or search results pages. They are obviously less important than the main category pages, but their indexing additionally influences the indexation of their components - ad details pages. This is particularly important when the listing starts with so called premium ads, which change less often than standard classifieds.

BEFORE THE TEST...

Having this theoretical information, we have decided to see how it is like in practice. We have analyzed a website of http://www.morusek.pl (with animals and pets related classifieds from Poland) which has a total number of indexed pages exceeding 100,000. Using the combination of "site" and "inurl" queries we checked what is the number of indexed pages with a list of classifieds (in Polish “ogloszenia”): http://www.google.pl/search?q=site%3Awww.morusek.pl+inurl%3A%22%2F0%2F%22+inurl%3Aogloszenia

The initial results were the following:

To continue the analysis, we excluded the first pages, as the numbers here are influenced by existence of some category pages with no classifieds at the moment, but which are indexable (there are crawlable links in the menu). In addition, to verify the effectiveness of the "site" query, we took into account a number of pages reported by Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) under "Internal Links". The results were as follows:

WHAT'S IMPORTANT TO KNOW?

The first conclusion is obviously that the higher the page number is, the less probability that the page will be indexed. Secondly, while the actual numbers of GWT and “site” queries vary a lot, the trends (slopes) are almost the same. On average, the chance that the robot will crawl to the next page of search results decreases by 1,2-1,3% per page.

It is also interesting that, according to Google Webmaster Tools, pages from 2 to 4 have a good indexation ratio which later decreases dramatically at the fifth position. For example, for sites with number 4 the level of indexation is 60%, while for pages number 15 it falls below 30% (according to Google Webmaster Tools), or 40% (for the command “site” in Google). This is due to the fact that Googlebots have a much longer way to reach the appropriate link in case of the latter (a link to page 15 first appears on page 12), while there are direct links to pages 2, 3 and 4 on the first pages of search listings (see below):

THE SUBJECT OF THE TEST: INTRODUCING MORE LINKS

We decided to test what would be the changes in indexation ratios if we introduced more links to subsequent ad listings pages. On the first page of each category we added links to the 5th, 10th and 15th pages as show on the picture below:

After a month we tested the changes. Due to inaccurate results returned by the command “site” in Google (number of indexed pages seemed to be greater than the actual number of them) we present data from Google Webmaster Tools (internal links) only:

THE RESULTS

The graph clearly shows us that indexation of pages that were added to the listing on the first page is much higher after the change (pages: 5th, 10th and 15th), and actually equals the indexation of pages 2, 3 and 4.

However, the increase in indexation of pages directly linked from the home page did not affect the indexation of the neighbouring pages. For example, we can see a huge increase for page 10, but there is no change for pages 9 and 11. The conclusion is that for Googlebots these pages are too far from the points of entry. Only category pages for main region have incoming links. To index page 9 of the intersection of categories and regions, the robots would have to go the following path:

What makes it even worse, not all the category pages have incoming links.

THE CONCLUSIONS

For classifieds or e-commerce websites, the conclusion is that the more pages linked in the listing, the greater the chance that they will be indexed. In general, it is clear that the farther from the point of entry (external link), the less chance that the page will be indexed. Therefore, it is advisable not to create sites with a very deep structure and to remember that the pages far from the points of entry should be additionally linked to (for example as "similar products", "see also", "related categories", etc.).

Looking at the chart we can see yet another change – a slight decrease in indexation of pages 2, 3 and 4. This can be either because there are new pages added recently and they have not been indexed yet (when the number of ads in a certain category has started to exceed the space on the first page), or due to increase in the number of outcoming links on the first page. I would rather bet the first explanation, because in fact the new links were added to a small percentage of pages. There are only 400 fifth pages (so the links to fifth pages were placed on 0,5% of all the first pages). Pages 10 and 15 are even less numerous.

Introduction of additional links has not increased the level of indexation of classifieds, however I suppose that the rate of change was simply too small to affect their indexation. Moreover, the indexation of ads of Morusek.pl exceeded already 80% when the experiment started. Such changes can produce a visible increase in the number of indexed pages in case of sites where the rate of change is much higher and the level of indexation of classifieds or products - lower.

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Posted by great scott!

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Posted by Sam Niccolls

Google News SERPs

One of the best parts of Google News is that news snippets are not just included among the news results on Google News. They also often appear amidst the organic search results for Google web search in the form of a Google News one box.

Getting Articles Discovered

Re-Crawl: Typically the initial discovery process is fast and it takes just a few minutes for your content to be crawled. But it's important to note that if you make changes to your article, Google News will come back. Generally Googlebot-News re-crawls for new content within about 12 hours.

Exclusion: For content you do not want indexed by Google News, you can employ the robots exclusion protocol, you can create either a robots.txt file or you can use META tags to identify the documents you want excluded from search results. As Google News' robots tips explains, either method is effective (however, at SEOmoz, we recommend against blocking with robots.txt whenever possible).  

Categorizing Articles

Keyword stuffing is definitely something you want to avoid. Two additional recommendations to help categorize your articles are - #1 put your articles into relevant categories or sub-folders on your own site and - #2 open the article with an explicit "city, state", the way the above article does. Each are great ways to help categorize without compromising user experience. You can also use the keywords field of your news sitemap.

Ranking Factors

Google News ranks stories in two distinct ways. An oversimplification of this process is that a story rank is first applied which identifies the story topics that are most talked about across the web. Then, once the most popular story topics are identified, each cluster is displayed in descending order based on relevance and interest in the topic. After cluster positions are set, Google News then tries to figure out which articles on each story topic should be included within each cluster.

Optimizing Multi-Media

Additional Recommendations

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Posted by randfish

I ran across this survey data eMarketer released last week and my heart sank:

This first chart looks innocent enough. It's when you look at the next one (from the same report) that things get ugly:

As a CEO, an SEO, a web marketer and a participant in social media, this drives me absolutely crazy. The very last item on the list is "conversions, ROI, etc." If your pulse isn't pounding, you might need to cut back on the pharmaceuticals.

Absolutely nothing in the analytics world should trump conversions and ROI for "senior marketers" or anyone else who cares about the success of a company. If you're thinking in terms of time on site or unique page views as primary metrics - metrics you'd describe in a survey as being those you're "most interested in" - there's a big problem. The web as a medium is designed to let you capture data beyond number of viewers or engagement level. It lets you track return visits and actions and build sophisticated models that predict what activities will drive up revenue and earnings in the most cost-effective ways. Why let it go to waste?

This report from Forrester suggests that the spend on web marketing has a lot of growth, and social media in particular is poised for exceptional CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate). But, I'm tremendously concerned that if marketers obsess over metrics like time on site, unique page views and CTR, they'll miss out on the real opportunity of all these channels.

ROI should be the ultimate metric - it should be the most important thing on every marketer's mind for every project and every channel. I'll grant that prioritizing the projects and investments that have the highest return is challenging, and even the best do it imperfectly. What worries me is that there are marketers who may be taking their cues not from the great analytics data suggesting that, although first-time visits from social media may have low value, over time, they can drive greater brand engagement, predict higher rates of repeat visits and eventually become buyers and brand evangelists, but from the onslaught of press coverage and media attention around social networks.

If you're taking your clues about where to spend your marketing budget from the media, rather than experiments and data, get ready for disappointment. Likewise, if you're measuring the wrong thing, you'll never know the right place to spend those dollars.

The beauty of online channels like SEO, landing page testing, conversion rate optimization, email marketing and, yes, social media is that the data tells a story we can read. So long as we're willing to hear the message, we can draw the connections to find the traffic sources that cost less and earn more. We can invest in those until the ROI from them diminishes to a point where other channels become viable. But only if we're paying attention to the metrics that matter.

There have been tools, data and experienced professionals in this field, fighting these fights for over a decade now. Tragically, it seems that we're in for a long slog.

p.s. We've filled up about 600/1,000 spots for Thursday's PRO webinar on SEO Analytics - feel free to join in :-)

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Posted by MichaelC

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Posted by randfish

Today I have two very big announcements. First, SEOmoz is exiting the consulting business to focus exclusively on our software model. And, second, we have an expanded partnership with Distilled (new US site: Distilled LLC), who'll be taking over many of our consulting clients and opening offices here in Seattle. I'm going to talk briefly about both of these below, then add detail on why we're so bullish about the SEO software market.

SEOmoz started in 2004 as a blog where I could post my struggles and learnings about search engine optimization. By 2005, the business was taking real consulting clients under the SEOmoz name. In 2007, we launched PRO membership, our self-service SaaS product and by the end of the year, PRO was 50% of our revenue. As I noted in the post on our venture capital process, that number has grown dramatically (to 85% of revenue) and in 2010, our goal is to make it the sole focus of the company.

As part of our exit from consulting, we've worked hard over the past 6 months with Distilled (note how Will Critchlow has been in a lot of Whiteboard Fridays of late) to help take over our existing clients and transition the handling of consulting leads. As part of this, we determined that Distilled could do the most good by opening an office in Seattle, WA. Duncan Morris is out in Seattle this week (and yes, we're making him watch the Superbowl next Sunday) to help scout locations and begin hiring. If you've got SEO experience and are in the Seattle area, please drop them a line!

What Does this Partnership Mean?

Why Software?

In the late 1990's, companies who wanted detailed reporting on their visitor analytics turned to consultants for sophisticated log file analysis or individual installations of code to track data. At the same time, the field of email marketing was dotted by thousands of individual, hard-to-scale, non-standard solutions. Today, SEO is the same way. Whether you're an external consultant or a in-house operator, you're almost certainly mashing up dozens of web-based tools, possibly with home-grown software and self-built spreadsheets to produce an SEO process that works. While many of us have found ways to do this effectively, there have been no platforms of SEO software to set the standards. That's what we're trying to change.

At SEOmoz, we believe that the promotion of ideas on the web needs to be simplified and that it starts with SEO. Small and medium businesses, web-based startups and consultants of all sizes need tools to help make their lives easier and processes that track important data for them, identify actionable metrics and report externally the missed opportunities and competitive landscape we all face. Just look how dollars are spent in the search marketing sphere:

(sadly, no 2009 numbers yet, but the distribution is likely very similar, though spending now exceeds $14B)

Now compare that to where growth is expected in online marketing over the next few years:

This summer, SEOmoz will be releasing our new software platform (and in the meantime, there will be plenty of other releases including an update to Open Site Explorer, a new Keyword Difficulty tool, a dramatically upgraded mozbar and more). We hope you'll join us for this exciting journey.

p.s. I also wanted to call out Jon Henshaw's terrific post on software vs. services. After working hard to develop this partnership over the last few months and transition out of consulting, we couldn't help but ponder the old adage of great minds thinking alike. :-)

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Posted by great scott!

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Here are some of the search engine oriented articles we have found interesting this week.

There are search engines to target manuals (About Feb 4 2010)

Bing, which has struggled to make headway against Google, can be a viable runner-up and make money online eventually (Independent Feb 3 2010)

On the French search engine Exalead and enterprise search (Beyond Search Feb 3 2010)

It really doesn’t matter if the site your link is residing on is www or non-www. (SE Roundtable Feb 5 2010)

It’s intended to enable you to do more with your voice and your phone in fewer clicks or moves. (SE Land feb 5 2010)

Google came to their store to take pictures for a new Google Maps product named “Google Store Views.” (SE Land Feb 4 2010)

One of the first site architectural issues to consider is how your URLs will read. (SE Guide Feb 4 2010)

Yahoo! sells off job search site and strikes new ad deal. (SE Watch Feb 4 2010)

Is Google preparing to launch its tablet PC that would go up against the Apple iPad? (SE Journal Feb 3 2010)

Sumit Agarwal, who was head of Google’s mobile product management, has become the deputy assistant secretary of defense for outreach and social media (BoomTown Feb 3 2010)

Julie Joyce on link building (SEO Chicks Feb 2 2010)

When a user stars a story Google alerts you to significant updates by putting the headline in bold, so you can get more info (SE Land Feb 2 2010)

The search engines are different in Europe (Bas van den Beld, SE Land, Feb 2 2010)

Google Apps May Get Its Own App Store (SE Land Feb 2 2010)

It is easy to forget to separate words in Arabic (Google Blog Feb 2 2010)

Dig deeper into the Spotify music catalogue (techradar Feb 5 2010)

Google Insights is an awesome tool for tracking and comparing trends. (SE Journal Feb 5 2010)

First, we have deepened our joint work together on web search to provide even more compelling experiences to Facebook users with Bing. (Bing Feb 5 2010)

Make no mistake, they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them, Jobs says. (Google Watch Jan 31 2010)

Google announced last week that its social search experiment, which it opened up for limited use last year, is now more widely available. (ResearchBuzz Feb 1 2010)

Google Squared has a new design to better handle queries looking for a single thing, like a specific president or a particular breed of dog. (P Bradley Feb 1 2010)

Google’s Chrome Web browser continued to gain market share through the first month of 2010, garnering 5.2 percent of the worldwide browser market (Google Watch Feb 1 2010)

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In Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland Google is celebrating the Sami national day with a special logo today.

The Sami people, one of the largest indigenous groups in Europe, lives in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Their traditional languages are the Sami languages, which are members of the Finno-Lappic group of the Uralic language family.

February 6 was the date the first Sami congress was held in 1917 in Trondheim, Norway. This congress was the first time that Norwegian and Swedish Sami came together to find solutions for common problems. Since 1993 Norway, Sweden and Finland (and now apparently Google) have recognized the date as the Sami National Day.

The Wikipedia on the Sami.

Photo:Sami bride, photo credit: samisknettverk

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Here are some of the search engine news stories we have found interesting this week:

Need to research trending topics? Want the basics on a subject quickly and easily? (P Bradley Jan 26 2010)

Google News has implemented a recrawl feature that allows us to focus on getting the newest articles around while still ensuring that we’re displaying the most up-to-date information. (Google News Jan 25 2010)

Bing has set up an interactive game called “Captain Mike’s Mars Adventure” (LiveSide Jan 29 2010)

In October 2009, Google proposed a new standard for implementing AJAX on web sites that would help search engines extract the content (SE Land Jan 28 2010)

Stuntdubl: I’m really excited to announce a video that I got a chance to record with Ted, an good friend from WebmasterWorld.com for years who I refer to as “my google oracle” (Jan 28 2010)

Bing is making it easier for you to keep up with your portfolio and the U.S. stock market. (SE Watch Jan 28 2010)

Tools that unshorten any URL you see on a web page to let you where they are linking (SE Journal jan 28 2010)

Now when you’re doing a search on Images, you may start seeing pictures from people in your social circle. (Google Blog Jan 27 2010)

Google Books: We’ve updated the home page by adding the ability to scroll through categories of books and magazines. (Jan 27 2010)

Ask Jeeves is launching a TV advertising campaign from 1 February as part of its core questions and answers marketing strategy for the UK site. (Marketing Jan 25 2010)

Google has added a large number of new embeddable objects for maps, docs, spreadsheets, forms, slideshows, presentations, videos, gadgets and more. (Beyond Search Jan 25 2010)

There’s a new option to “Browse these bookmarks.” (SE Watch Jan 29 2010)

Before we really start diving into the specifics of managing a paid search account, it is important to cover some standard industry jargon. (SE Land Jan 28 2010)

Google has announced that it’s now personalizing search suggestions that appear on Google Maps. (SE Land Jan 28 2010)

Revenues came in at $1.7 billion, which was down 4% compared to a year ago but up 10% compared to the third quarter. (SE Watch Jan 26 2010)

Ben Edelman uncovered evidence that even if you disable the Google Toolbar, Google may still be tracking your web browsing behavior. (SE Land Jan 26 2010)

But doesn’t mention Google by name (techradar Jan 26 2010)

All you do is copy the URL into Google Reader and click on “create a feed.” Google Reader will then periodically visit the page and publish any significant changes. (SE Land Jan 25 2010)

Google Webmaster: Last year we introduced Rich Snippets, a new feature that makes it possible to surface structured data from your pages on Google’s search results. (Jan 22 2010)

Twitter Trends shows you what Tweet topics are currently hot and trending on Twitter. SE Land Jan 25 2010)

Ratings and a quick look at nutritional information accompany the results. (SE Watch Jan 25 2010)

Video of the Week:

Video on the new recipe search feature over at Microsoft’s Bing:

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This week saw the birth of the Apple iPad. In spite of initial skepticism Steve Jobs has decided that the tablet has a future, and he is right. It will also change the way we search. Pandia argues that publishers should support a tool that lets tablet users surf the web and subscription based content at the same time.

There has been a lot of negative comments on the iPad. It doesn’t do this, it doesn’t do that, and nearly all of these comments come from geeks comparing the iPad to a regular computer. This is not a netbook, even if it can do much of what a netbook can do. Nor is it a plain ebook reader.

It is what I for a lack of a better word will call a media reader on steroids.

The reference tool

Back home we have an old laptop lying in a shelf in the living room. We don’t use it much for word processing, heavy calculations or for designing web sites.

We use it as a reference tool. If we watch a movie, we look it up at IMDB. If we need a recipe we search for one using Google. If we want to convert some measures, we find an appropriate tool. We use it for YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. And we use it for reading news.

My wife also uses it for games, and I pretend not to notice.

We do use the keyboard, but not for heavy lifting.

The ebook reader

On another shelf you will find the Amazon Kindle my wife gave me for Christmas.

I love it! I am a parallel reader, and tend to read several books at the same time, fact and fiction. If the book I am looking for is available for Kindle I download it to my Kindle using the Kindle itself or the Amazon store. I use the simplistic interface to switch between the various publications.

It remembers my latest position for each book, and I can write in comments with the small keyboard and store clippings.

The black and white epaper screen is crisp and easy on the eyes, and for reading plain text it is a dream. It works very well for reading fiction, although the screen is often too small to get the full benefit of scholarly publications. The pictures are too small, and it is hard to navigate between the main body of text, footnotes and references. You should buy the big screen Kindle for that, or go for the iPad.

But this is only the beginning. The Kindle is not there yet, but I can see what Apple is going for.

First you may subscribe to newspapers. Not just selected articles on a web site, but a whole newspaper.

I am subscribing to the International Herald Tribune on my Kindle (the Tribune is the international version of the New York Times). Every morning the 3G has downloaded the latest issue — all of the text and a few black and white pictures.

It works very well. Still the number of pictures is limited. Any color supplement will be missing. I do not miss the ads, but I am sure the Tribune would have like to add some to keep the paper going. And would it not be great if they could embed video?

You cannot do that on the Kindle, because by using epaper Amazon has sacrificed speed and colors for readability and a long battery life.

Apple goes the other way. By using an LED screen, they sacrifice readability and battery life for the wonders of color, design and moving pictures. But by doing so they have turned the ebook reader into a media platform.

Kitchen and airport computing

This is the future of kitchen and airport computing:

1. An ebook reader. 2. A newspaper and magazine reader. 3. A gaming platform. 4. A reference tool (dictionary, Wikipedia, phone catalog etc.) 5. A viewer for short videos (YouTube) 6. A social communication platform (chat, twitter, Facebook)

The iPad can be used for a lot of other purposes as well (like listening to music, word processing, watching movies and more, but there are other tools more suitable for that kind of thing).

Tablet search

Search will become an essential part of the user experience of the multimedia tablets. You need search to find facts, applets, videos, news, friends and colleagues.

Given the larger screen, the regular search engines should be able to provide the services without much fuzz. In fact, present day Bing, Yahoo! and Google can perform this task well.

There will be room for a new type of combined search tool, however. As I noted, the temptation to subscribe to magazines and newspapers is big.

It is cheaper to by magazines this way. You get them on your doorstep as soon as they are out. No, strike that! You get them in your lap as soon as they are out, and they include a lot of information that is not available online.

Accessing the hidden subscription based web

What I would like to see, is a search tool that lets me search both the web and the content of the magazines and newspapers I am subscribing to at the same time. I want this tool to be able to search not only the downloaded issues of the Tribune (or the Economist, the New Scientist, Time or whatever it is I am subscribing to), but also the content of the online archives of the same publications.

Then I want to be able to access that historical content by clicking on the relevant link in the search results, in the same way as I would go to any of the free content available on the web, and without having to go to their web site and log in as a subscriber.

So listen up, you old fashioned paper publishers! You are constantly complaining that Google and Craig’s List have been taking your livelihood away. Make sure that someone makes a search tools that lets me search your own databases, and help them do it.

If you do so, you will see that the decline of paper based publication will be compensated by the rise of tablet subscriptions.

The future of the Kindle For Amazon the iPad poses a huge problem. In the US you may use the Kindle for some kind of web browsing and searching with Google, but given the limitations of the screen, it isn’t that useful. Since I live in Europe I can use it for browsing the Wikipedia only. That is helpful, but it cannot in no way replace a proper web browser.

Given the Kindle’s reliance on epaper (which is slow and can only “print” in black and white), video and colors are out of the question for the time being. For this reason the Kindle will remain primarily a good ebook reader, and nothing more.

Amazon could launch another iPad like type of Kindle, of course, in order to compete with Apple. I am not sure they will. Amazon’s main objective is to sell ebooks.

You can already read Kindle ebooks on the iPhone. That app can be used on the iPad as well. They will probably also make a new app for the iPad, making it easy to read Amazon ebooks on the Apple tablet. In other words: They can use the iPad in the same way Apple will be doing with their new iBook store. They can use the iPad to beat Apple in the ebook selling game.

I doubt very much that Apple will dare to stop them from doing so. Stopping Amazon’s iPad app would give them too much bad press, even if the Kindle ebooks are cheaper than Apple’s iBooks. If Apple is to fight Amazon in this game, it must be by making exclusive agreements with publishers that let the iBook store sell their books earlier than Amazon.

photo credit iPad: nDevilTV photo credit Kindle: oskay

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Here are the search engine stories we have found interesting this week:

Ballmer suggested that Google’s decision to no longer filter out internet searches objectionable to the Chinese government was an irrational business decision. (SE Land Jan 22 2010)

Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin each intend to sell approximately 5 million shares (SE Land Jan 22 2010)

Interestingly, while Google retains its lead among the search properties worldwide, Microsoft’s search market share seemed to be growing by leaps and bounds. (SE Journal Jan 22 2010)

Adding to last year’s announcement of rich snippets for reviews and people, Google has created one for events, too. (SE Land Jan 22 2010)

Google Webmaster Central on search engine optimization (Jan 21 2010)

Now search engines are saying variables in URLs are good, as long as you use the canonical meta tag. (Online Marketing Blog Jan 21 2010)

The average Twitter user is now following around 170 people and is being followed by an average of 300 other people. (Jennifer Laycock Jan 21 2010)

Will it take a year to build? (techradar Jan 2010)

Open Site Explorer provides a number of data points pulled from SEOmoz’s Linkscape tool and its index of the web. (SE Land jan 20 2010)

Becoming the default search provider on 70 million (roughly) iPhone OS devices would be an enormous boost for Bing. (SE Land Jan 20 2010)

Microsoft’s Bing blog announced they will reduce the time frame they store search data, from 18 months to only 6 months. (SEO Roundtable Jan 20 2010)

Google Blog: Enabling computers to understand language remains one of the hardest problems in artificial intelligence. (Jan 19 2010)

Google considers the word “photos” to be synonymous to “pictures” and bolds it. (Blogoscoped Jan 20 2010)

Bing’s autosuggest feature now provides more current suggestions as you type a query. (SE Land Jan 19 2010)

It seems that many online news consumers are more like grazers. (Marketing Pilgrim Jan 19 2010)

I’ve used each of the following domain tools at one point or another, and they each have a different approach. (Will Reinhardt Jan 19 2010)

Each time you search, two sets of results are provided. They’re chosen from four search engines: Google, Yahoo!, Bing and hakia. (SE Watch Jan 18 2010)

Vanessa has a new book coming out called Marketing in the Age of Google, which I’ve had the opportunity to preview (Online Marketing Blog Jn 18 2010)

Multiple meaning word perception, question answering technology, structured information as well as new user experience model (AltSeachEngines Jan 24 2010)

Kartoo, one of the first of the visual search engines, with it’s particular mapping technique would appear to have died. (Phil Bradley Jan 23 2010)

A huge collection of comic book covers (over 450,000+), more resources, and fun tools for playing with them. (ReseachBuzz Jan 20 2010)

Phil Bradley: “To be honest, I think I’d be more inclined to produce more, smaller search engines based on Google’s custom search engines. ” (Jan 19 2010)

It gives you a list of what’s happening in your area, including music, festivals, conferences, sports, family-friendly events, etc. (ResearchBuzz Jan 18 2010)

Phil Bradley is not impressed (Jan 18 2010)

Share your photos, files, projects, draft documents, plan trips etc. (MacLife Jan 13 2010, via Beyond Search)

And part of the problem comes with a decidedly human factor that doesn’t play well with artificial intelligence—language. (SE Land Jan 22 2010)

The video of the week

Listen to Matt Cutts on the stage of the Google index. He gives a good summary of what Google has been up to in 2009.

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Hakia has launched NoBrandSearch.com, a site where you can enact your own battle of the search engines and find out which one you like the best.

This is what hakia says about the tool:

“NoBrandSearch is an experiment to compare the core competencies of the search engines in the market. (…) Each time you enter a query, each side of the screen is randomly selected from the search engines in the market. Their brands and special features are screened out. All you have to do is to decide which set of results are better.”

Every time you search you will get two anonymized sets of search results side by side. Click on the result set you like the best, and you will get the name of both search engines. The idea is that this will give you an unbiased idea of the search quality of search engine like Google, Yahoo!, Bing and — obviously — Hakia.

Note that No Brand Search only includes the regular organic search results. There is more to the search engine result pages of the major search engines than that, of course.

The real reason for this service is that hakia hopes you will select the hakia search results as often as possible, making you understand that theirs is the search engine for you. We admire their self confidence!

By the way: Do take a look at hakia. It is one of the few serious alternatives to the big three (which are to become the big two when Yahoo! starts delivering Bing results).

See also: Hakia, a meaning-based search engine

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There has been tons of media attention paid to all of the companies that have entered the real time web. And, in addition to all of the new startups, companies like Google and Bing are now mixing real time results into their engines. However, what about the user? What can the user get out of the real time web? In this article, we will touch on some of the things users can do.

By guest writer Evan Britton

Fresh news on your subject of choice

The main thing users can get out of the real time web is information. You can find out what is being said right now about any particluar subject. If you want to see what people think about a sports event, movie, celebrity, or any other breaking news - a real time search will inform you.

You can head to Twitter’s homepage to perform a real time search. Twitter makes it very easy to see what is being said about a respective subject.

It is also interesting to see which links are being shared on the real time web. Sency has built an interesting real time engine which shows you both what is being said, along with today’s most popular links for a particular search term.

Hot trends

In addition to seeing popular links and what is being said, it is also interesting to see what the hot trends are this moment. Often times, real time trends can show you breaking news before major media outlets pick up the story.

What The Trend is an interesting site which shows you both the current trends as well as reasons behind why a given topic is popular right now. You can also check out this what’s going on lately page which will show you 100 popular topics that have been talked over the past few days.

Find related topics

Lastly, users can use the real time web to see topics related to a given topic. If you head over to Tweet Cloud, you can enter any keyword you’d like and see other topics that are being discussed alongside this topic. In addition, you will notice that certain words are larger font - which means that this respective keyword has been used more often along side the initial keyword that was searched for.

As more and more users take advantage of the real time web, understanding how it works and the places you can go to will surely benefit any internet surfer.

photo credit: garryknight

Evan Britton is an internet marketing veteran who recently founded Sency. The mission of Sency is to help bring the real time web to internet users so that at any time, they can find out what’s going on right now.

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We have covered the Web buzz on the China/Google conflict in a separate article. Here are some headlines from the rest of the world of search and search engines.

Google has agreed to take down links to a website that promotes racist views of indigenous Australians. (Blogoscoped Jan 17 2010)

Algorithms judge the relevance of microblog posts containing 140 characters or less. (Technology Review Jan 13 2010)

I like List Tags, which allows you to enter a Twitter user, find out what tags are associated with them, and then get lists based on those tags. (ResearchBuzz Jan 11 2010)

DeepDyve and CiteULike announced today that the companies are collaborating to deliver a superior way to easily and affordably share and read scholarly information on the Internet. (AltSearchEngines Jan 14 2010)

Wolfram|Alpha announced last week that it has added data for a variety of physical activities. (ResearchBuzz jan 11 2010)

Yahoo Labs has bolstered its ranks of social scientists, adding highly credentialed cognitive psychologists, economists and ethnographers from top universities around the world. (SFGate Jan 11 2010)

Yahoo quietly announced they are discontinuing their Yahoo Shopping API, because they are going to be outsourcing the Yahoo Shopping component of their site to PriceGrabber.com. (SE Roundtable Jan 12 2010)

Google does change the real time search results based on your word order. (ResearchBuzz Jan 13 2010)

The Iranian Cyber Army has done it again. Their clever team of hackers has taken hostage of Baidu.com, China’s largest search engine (SE Journal Jan 12 2010)

Got some keywords you want to monitor and you don’t want to miss a thing? (ResearchBuzz Jan 13 2010)

Google Docs Blog: We’re happy to announce that over the next few weeks we will be rolling out the ability to upload, store and organize any type of file in Google Docs. (Jan 12 2010)

Pagerank is not dead at all, its alive and kicking and its looking at Twitter. (SearchCowboys Jan 13 2010)

Chinese Baidu puts a lid on the Google/China war (SE Land Jan 13 2010)

One of the many ranking signals they use is the number and quality of your followers (Marketing Pilgrim Jan 13 2010)

Google UK gave you American English - for a while (SE Journal Jan 14 2010)

Shashi Seth will be managing Yahoo’s Search team and all things related to Yahoo Search. (SE Land Jan 14 2010)

Just like Nielsen’s stats, Google is also leading the pack with Hitwise (SE Journal Jan 14 2010)

You won’t find any that are more than a week or so old on Twitter. (SE Land Jan 14 2010)

Google announced that it is offering optimized search suggestions for your mobile searching pleasure. (Marketing Pilgrim Jan 15 2010)

Yahoo is saying “We know how much you use Google Adwords so just ‘copy and paste’ it to us and spend with us. Please!” (Marketing Pilgrim Jan 15 2010)

SlideFinder, at http://www.slidefinder.net/, helps you find PowerPoint presentations on the Web. (ResearchBuzz Jan 13 2010)

The video of the week: On Google’s Personalized Search

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To understand the Google China war we need to understand how the Communist party thinks and acts. photo credit: QiFei

As we reported earlier this week, Google is no longer willing to censor search results in China.

The announcement is dramatic, to say the least, and we have no reason to believe that Google will not follow up on its threats: i.e. close down its operations in China and the google.cn site if the Chinese government does not allow uncensored result.

It is also pretty obvious that the Chinese Communists are not going to allow this. Google knows that. This again means that Google will leave China. The “talk about talks” is just a formality.

The cyber attack

It has been known for a time that there has been internal disagreement in the Google leadership regarding China. Co-founder Sergey Brin, who had his childhood in Soviet Russia, has been particularly uncomfortable with the idea of giving in to the Communist regime. Still, the dream of conquering a huge Internet market, as well as the argument that it is better with some information than none prevailed until this week.

What changed was the fact that someone launched a co-ordinated attack against the services of Google and other American companies looking — apparently — for business information as well as information on Chinese dissidents and human rights activists in other parts of the world known for supporting the Chinese opposition.

It seems they were two attacks: One where someone hacked into the Google servers directly (although not achieving their goal) and another using spyware exploting a vulnerability in Internet Explorer, tapping information from infected computers, and getting login information by spying on the users for these PCs.

Although this hasn’t been proved, it is reasonable to conclude that the attacks were orchestrated by the Chinese government. Who else would want access to the Gmail accounts of the Chinese opposition?

This told Google that the tactic of placating the Chinese government is not working. Instead of allowing more freedom for its citizens, the regime is so scared of a “democratic revolution” that it is doing anything it can to keep an eye on possible threats.

The dilemma of the Chinese regime

The Chinese regime has learned from history. The fall of the Eastern Block was partly caused by the fact that the citizens of countries like East Germany and Hungary had access to Western TV and radio. This enabled them to see through the lies of their governments’ propaganda. The revolutions of Georgia, Ukraine and (right now) Iran have all been driven by an active use of the Web.

The Chinese government also knows the danger of building up an educated and wealthy middle class. In spite of what Communist doctrine tells you, it is the middle class that normally demands democracy. This means that the Communists need to do two things at once:

(1) Ensure economic growth that will placate the middle class. For this they need to develop a knowledge based economy with a well educated population - i.e. produce a large number of potential enemies of the regime. This is their Catch 22.

(2) To get around this dilemma, the regime tries to control the affluent middle class by censoring information flow. In this way they hope that the middle class will be unwilling or unable to demand political change.

This is why they took the chance of attacking Google’s infrastructure, trying to get access to Gmail accounts.

Attacking the Cloud

That was a huge mistake. By attacking Google’s cloud computers and the accounts of Gmail holders, they were threatening the Google strategy of moving all types of computing onto the Web.

Google’s plan is to beat Microsoft and the other traditional software companies by offering online services that accomplish the same tasks online as traditional software is doing locally today. They hope that in a few years you will replace Windows and Microsoft Office with Google Chrome and Google Docs. But for that to happen, the potential users have to be able to trust Google with their personal information. The fact that the Chinese government has been able to hack into the Gmail accounts of dissidents undermines this trust. If the Reds can do it, others can do it too.

This is what made Google declare war on the Communist regime. They were already under attack, a kind of threat Google cannot live with.

Google’s mistake

Google had made a terrible mistake. They probably believed they could handle China and its regime, in spite of Brin’s misgivings. They were wrong. This is not a regime that will give in to Western ideas of freedom of information and democracy, simply because it cannot afford to do so without losing its grip on power.

The only way to do this kind of business with China is to swallow your pride and do the dirty work of censorship for them. A lot of American and European companies do that. It is business, after all. But Google with it’s “Do no evil!” slogan should know better.

The cyber attacks made Google realize its mistake. Now it has, belatedly, come to its senses. That’s good. Now it is time for companies like Yahoo! to do the same.

Here’s the CNBC coverage of the Chinese attacks:

Here is another report from the Newshour:

Google/China coverage from around the Web:

Microsoft suggests users can avoid any problem by using protected mode and the highest security settings. (techradar Jan 15 2010)

and About Google Allegedly Already Lifting Censorship (Google Blogoscoped jan 15 2010)

Peering inside the hacked machine, engineers saw evidence of attacks, not only at Google, but also at at least 33 other companies (NYT Jan 14 2010)

China is unlikely to give ground on Google’s demands that its search engine results be unfiltered. (NYT Jan 14 2010)

Danny Sullivan is wondering if the GoogleHack will develop into a major reversal for the growth of cloud computing. (SE Land Jan 14 2010)

placing flowers and candles by their Google sign outside the building. (SE Roundtable Jan 14 2010)

Security expert Graham Cluley asks whether infected PDFs were to blame (techradar jan 14 2010)

Microsoft and Bing are bound to face the same challenges faced by Google – a fierce resistance to opening up China to the connected world (Liveside.net Jan 13 2010)

Chinese Baidu puts a lid on the Google/China war (SE Land Jan 13 2010)

Google’s public statements and decision are being applauded, dissected and heavily tweeted within and outside China. (SE Land Jan 13 2010)

John Battelle: This is politics at its finest, and it’s a very clear statement to China: We’re done playing the game your way. (Jan 13 2010)

Google has willingly allowed self-censored its search results since January 27, 2006, on its Google China service (Jan 12 2010)

Https becomes the standard setting (techradar Jan 13 2010)

Maybe Google finally went on the offensive against China to take focus away from a significant security breach. (BoomTown Jan 13 2010)

The Official Google Blog on Google’s break with China (Jan 12 2010)

Attacks on Google’s cloud are actually attacks on its consumers, because Google hosts its users’ data on thousands of servers in data centers all over the world. (Google Watch Jan 14 2010)

The route the attackers used was malicious software used to infect personal computers. Any computer connected to the Internet can fall victim to such attacks. (Google Enterprise Blog Jan 12 2010)

Google said Tuesday that it would stop cooperating with Chinese Internet censorship and consider shutting down its operations in the country altogether (NYT Jan 12 2010)

But to many of the young, well-educated Chinese who are Google’s loyal users here, the company’s threat to leave is in fact no laughing matter. (NYT Jan 16 2010)

Gibbs: Helene, you heard the President in Shanghai take a question from the Internet about the universal right of a free Internet. He strongly supports that, and we support Google’s action in a decision to no longer censure searches that happen using the

China Digital Times: This highly symbolic move by Google demonstrates the fundamental conflict between the free flow of information and an authoritarian regime (Xiao Qiang Jan 13 2010)

Google said that the intrusion attempt originated from China and was executed with the goal of obtaining information about political dissidents (ars technica Jan 14 2010)

US search giant remained silent, unlike Google (techradar Jan 16 2010)

Mike Moran: They look like the model world corporate citizen for standing up to the Chinese. Sure they lost some opportunity there, but the rest of the world thinks they are heroes. (Jan 14 2010)

It’s not about human rights, says Oxblood Ruffin (techradar Jan 15 2010)

Computer attacks on Google that the search giant said originated in China were part of a concerted political and corporate espionage effort that exploited security flaws in e-mail attachments (Washington Post Jan 14 2010)

Sergey Brin was the one arguing for Google withdrawing from China (WSJ Jan 14 2010)

I’m not saying human rights didn’t play into the decision, but this was as much about business. (TechCrunch Jan 12 2010)

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Google is no longer willing to continue censoring search results on Google.cn after proof of v. Recent cyber attacks on Google and the subsequent investigation has led to the discovery that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties.

What has happened?

This has not happened due to any security breach at Google, but most likely through phishing scams or malware placed on the users’ computers.

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered have led Google to review the feasibility of their business operations in China: They are no longer willing to continue censoring results on Google.cn.

In the weeks to come Google will discuss with the Chinese government how they could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. On the official Google blog they write:

“We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”

A brave decision

This is good news indeed! When Google.cn launched three years ago, Pandia and many others worried that the decision to censor search results was a serious breach with Google’s corporate motto “not be evil” and that it would lend legitimacy to the censorship and other human rights violations of the Chinese regime.

But China is a huge and quickly growing market and the temptation at the time was too big for Google. However, it turns out that they were trying to keep the evil to a minimum. In the same blog post quoted above, Google quotes their own blog post (or testemony as they called it) on the launch of Google.cn:

“we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.”

We are happy to see that these words have indeed provided a guideline for Google and that they have taken a decision which will probably cost them a lot of business but sends a very strong signal to the Chinese authorities.

photo credit: Ed-meister

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Instant Answers and Visual Search galleries are given the winter games treatment.

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The largest search marketing show in Europe is heading back to London 15 - 19 February. And it's jam packed with a mixture of classic sessions, new sessions, top rated speakers, and new talent.

As a parent, I know it's never fair to say one of your kids is your favorite. They're all your favorite. And I kind of have this situation with the family of shows in the SES international conference series. I shouldn't really have a favorite. But I do have a very strong affinity with the London show. I've been involved on the programming side of the London conference since I was appointed as chair and host of the of the show back in 2007

And as it rolls back into town in a week or so, I've been taking a look at how the content has been evolving. For 2010, the show has a whole new look and feel. So, I thought I would pick out the fabulous keynote session we have lined up.

Before I do that, I should quickly mention that our partners at the Online Marketing Summit have a full day of sessions prior to the start of the main SES show. Monday 15 February has a great line-up of speakers and topics covering all disciplines in online marketing. There's a real bonus for anyone who has purchased a full show pass for SES, in that this also allows you to attend the OMS day free of charge. So, come in a day earlier and take advantage of some extracurricular digital marketing education.

And on the subject of education...that really is the byword for what SES is all about. For 12 years SES has been educating an international audience in the finer art and science of search engine marketing. And this year, in London, we've broadened the scope of content to really help online marketers refine their integrated marketing skills.

Each morning at SES London, we have specially selected international thought leaders. And to kick off the new decade we've invited three visionary marketers to share their insights into what's successfully working right now and where it might go in the future.

Day one kicks off with kick-ass-keynoter Avinash Kaushik. Many people will know Avinash from both his excellent books on analytics and his role as Google's analytics evangelist. But if you haven't seen Avinash present a keynote session, be prepared for an online marketing force of nature. "Be Awesome: Ideas for Approaching Search Analytics Differently is the session title for the first keynote of the show.

In his keynote, Avinash shares specific ideas you can execute to find the audiences you crave online and use data to ensure that you are getting the highest possible ROI. And his advice on how to prepare for this session? Bring an open mind!

Day two kicks off with another of the smartest minds in online marketing. Bryan Eisenberg is co-author of no less than three Wall Street Journal/Amazon/New York Times best selling marketing books. As an industry pioneer in conversion techniques, Bryan will share his 21 secrets to top converting Web sites. Search marketing, usability, testing, and more. It all comes together in this one "must take notes" session.

And day three sees the return to SES London by someone who truly does deserve the "guru" accolade. Eight books later and dozens of awards and accolades (including one of the 50 most influential people in digital marketing), Jim Sterne will reveal the findings from his upcoming book: "Social Media Metrics" which, coincidentally, also happens to be the title to this session. "Today, social media is where the World Wide Web was in 1995. Everybody's talking about it but best practices are few and far between. We know it's important, valuable and catching on. What we don't know yet is how to measure the business results of our business investments in this new communication medium," says Jim. So listen up, there's a global expert speaking!

Like most people I know in the industry, there's nothing I like better than a good old debate on what's working, what's not, where the industry is going, and everything else that goes with it. So, I decided to bring back the keynote power discussion panels each afternoon.

The first one on Tuesday afternoon is a state of the industry session and sees the new chairman of Incisive Media (the proud purveyors of this fine conference series) making her debut at SES London. Helen Alexander, CBE has had a remarkable career in publishing (The Economist), is currently president of the CBI, non-executive director of Centrica and Rolls Royce plc, as well as trustee of the World Wide Web Foundation. Phew! Some background. Together, she and I will moderate the afternoon power panel.

And what a superb panel we have. Jonathan Beeston, client services director, Europe with Efficient Frontier will bring us up to speed with findings from EF's quarterly reports on the industry. Meanwhile, Edward (Teddie) Cowell, SEO director with Guava, will give us a bit of trend analysis based on the annual report that Guava and eConsultancy produce annually. He'll take a look over his shoulder at the way things have evolved in the industry over the years they have been producing the report and also take a peek into his crystal ball to give initial thoughts on what's likely to emerge in the upcoming trends report.

Also on the panel is Anders Hjorth, CEO of Outrider, one of the industry's longest serving SEM companies. He'll be giving expert comment relating to the information provided by Jonathan and Teddie as well as adding his own insights on differences in industry trends between the U.K., Europe, and elsewhere. And joining from the U.S. is Kristen Mangers, founder and CEO, WebVisible, Inc. Kristen is a search marketing expert specializing in local search. She has proprietary data to share on how local search is changing in the U.S., as well as giving some insight into the U.K. marketplace as it continues to develop.

All-in-all this is a not-to-be-missed session for those with their eyes on industry trends and developments.

On Wednesday afternoon, we focus our attention on the SEO side of the business. The session has the title, SEO: Where to next? and will touch on every aspect of the art and science of search engine optimization. The panel will be headed by industry stalwart and managing director of long established SEM firm Receptional, Dixon Jones. He'll be joined by Lisa Myers, CEO and owner of SEO and social media agency Verve Search. Lisa's been in the business for five years and she certainly knows her onions when it comes to search and social. A genuine award winner, Lisa is the founder of seo-chicks.com and also blogs for SearchCowboys.

In the blue corner, Maile Ohye, developer programs tech lead with Google, will be giving us the big G viewpoint. Maile coordinates Google Webmaster Central outreach efforts, such as the Webmaster Central Blog. And in the red corner, Dan Cohen, global SEO lead, MSN, gives a viewpoint from the Bing camp. And Julian Sambles, head of audience development with the Telegraph, provides a few of his own SEO headlines.

The Thursday afternoon panel tackles all things paid search/content networks/display. The panel is led by Jon Myers, head of search/associate director with Mediavest and the newest addition to the SES Global Advisory Board. With 11 years of search marketing experience, Jon is a veteran with a very impressive background. Known to the powers that be at the major search engines, he is well up to speed with industry matters and frequently tapped into by major online marketing publications.

Joining him on the panel is Ciarán Norris, lead, global social media, Mindshare. Ciarán has been working online since getting a job in a Sydney Internet cafe in 1999. Working with clients such as Nike, Rolex, Unilever and HSBC he certainly brings the big brand value to the session. Duncan Fisher is head of paid search with leading agency, Latitude. Keeping abreast of the latest techniques and technology in search, Duncan is very much "hands on" and has great experience in campaign architecture and developing trends in the search space.

It's probably not unusual to have Tom Jones on this panel. But no doubt he's heard that joke too many times. And I'm beginning to wish I hadn't written that... but too late. Tom is head of media with international agency, iCrossing. Tom and his team of search experts offer consultancy and deliver accountable media campaigns across myriad sectors including retail, travel, finance, and B2B. So, when it comes to looking into what's happening in industry specific sectors, he's an expert.

Julie Warburton, client service director at Microsoft Advertising (U.K.) rounds off this panel of experts. Julie is responsible for premium search, display account management, and both display and network operations. So, on a panel discussing the near convergence of paid search, content networks, and display she's certainly a great addition. Formerly with Yahoo, Julie joined Overture as head of implementation in 2002. This is a lady steeped in industry knowledge.

And something I am so looking forward to is the Black hat/White hat - Unconferenced debate. Join us for a first time and unique session at SES, London. The session takes place in the hotel bar. The soapbox will be available for a few select speakers on either side to make their case and then the audience takes over. All with a glass of your favorite beverage in your hand, of course!

Don't forget to sign up for the pre-conference meet and greet too. The crowd is building already and I'm much looking forward to catching up with friends and colleagues.

Join around 1500 of your friends and colleagues in London 15 - 19 February.

Ahhh, this is the stuff conferences are made of!

Action contrasts rhetoric since Google ultimatum.

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After failing to acquire Twitter, will Google now compete?

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Get ready for the "Bring Back the Old Facebook" groups.

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If you look at Hot Searches in Google Trends for Feb. 7, 2010, "dockers free pants" ranks #1, "dockers.com/freepants" ranks #2, "dockers super bowl ad" ranks #10, and "www.dockers.com/freepants" ranks #14.

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Suggestions run the gamut from competitors to simply next-door establishments.

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Tell us which search results you prefer for professional football's biggest day.

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The Google Superbowl ad ran in the third quarter of the big game. As CEO Eric Schmidt said in a tweet yesterday, "Hell has indeed frozen over."

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In abount an hour, you'll get a chance to vote for your favorite Super Bowl 2010 commercials at YouTube's AdBlitz Channel. But you can vote for the best pre-game YouTube videos now.

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According to a variety of sources, Google plans to run a Super Bowl commercial in the third quarter to today's big game.

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Five years ago in February 2005, according to legend, the idea of YouTube was born after Chad Hurley and Steve Chen experienced difficulty sharing videos that had been shot at a dinner party at Chen's apartment in San Francisco.

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Nearly 178 million U.S. Internet users watched 33.2 billion online videos during December 2009, according to the latest data from comScore Vedio Metrix.

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Cupertino-based company rumored to be launching mobile ad network.

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It's that time again.

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