All About Content

I’m at SES this week, as are many search professionals. You can catch good coverage of the sessions on the Search Engine Watch blog, as well as some of the major sites, so I won’t duplicate any efforts here.

But I did pay particular attention to the ClickZ track about consumer generated media (CGM) and how bloggers exert their influence on brands. It’s inspired me to consider blogging about the truly subpar service my colleague and I have been getting at the Sheraton thus far. Maybe write a couple of paragraphs about Sheraton’s terrible customer service, write a to-the-point headline, wrap it in H1 tags, and see if the post starts to rank on searches for Sheraton complaints… it would be an interesting experiment. Would that be bad? It’s not like I’m just making it up; there have been multiple screw-ups and the response by the staff has been incredibly unfriendly and unhelpful. (Except Claudia. She was very nice. Thank you, Claudia)

David Utter of WebProWorld reports on a survey conducted by Gallup: blog readership is flat or declining.

A scant 9 percent of users read blogs frequently, with 11 percent reading them occasionally. Out of the 13 activities Gallup measured in its poll, reading blogs finished dead last.

And Slate columnist Daniel Gross, contrary to the rah-rah tone of Dave Sifry’s report on the blogosphere, wonders whether blog popularity among the business sector has hit its peak. In his February 12 article, titled Twilight of the Blogs, he writes that “[t]here are troubling signs — akin to the 1999 warnings about the Internet bubble — that suggest blogs have just hit their top.”

Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Just like the Internet didn’t disappear after the bubble popped, blogging isn’t going anywhere. Too much attention, too quickly always leads to a big let down. Once the hype is over, things will come back into perspective and the best blogs will continue to provide value and exert influence.

A federal court has ruled that Google’s image search violates the copyrights of Perfect 10 Inc. by displaying thumbnails of images from the publisher’s website in the search results.

The argument that showing thumbnails in search results constitutes copyright infringement is similar to previous arguments leveled at Google Print — namely that search engines shouldn’t be able to display book snippets in the SERPs because that is the same as “republishing” copyrighted content.

The difference is that the intent of Google Print (aka Google Books) was to take content that did not exist online, whose authors had no intent of putting on the Web, and scan it in order to display those snippets. In this case, Perfect 10 Inc was disputing thumbnail displays of photos it presumably wants people to find, but only directly on its website and for a fee.

The ruling could prevent Google from featuring thumbnail pictures, but not limit Google from linking to actual photos which exist on other Web sites. Google expects to appeal an injunction if the judge issues one, the Mountain View, California-based company’s litigation counsel Michael Kwun said in a statement.

Kwun tries to reassure us: “We anticipate that any preliminary injunction will have no effect on the vast majority of image searches, and will affect only searches related to Perfect 10.”

The Pew Internet & American Life Project, which has been documenting the social impact of the Internet, released the results of a new survey last week. According to Pew, nearly one-third of American Internet users go online just for fun on a typical day rather than to check email, read news or use a search engine. That’s a sharp increase over the number who responded this way a year ago.

“Hanging out” is now the third most popular activity on the Net, after emailing and using search engines. (If email, catching up on news, and searching for stuff doesn’t count as “just for fun,” what does?)

Conversely, two-thirds of respondents said they’ve tried at one time surfing the Web just to pass the time — meaning that one-third (of Internet users!) have never used the Internet just for fun. Well, guess that’s just more bandwidth for the rest of us.

• A Look at MSN’s Search Algorithm
• Hacking MSN Search & Win
• Google Changes Language About Search Results Being 100% Organic
• Technorati Allows Filtering by Authority
• Yahoo’s Zawodny Tells Google Haters “Oh Cry Me a River”
• Reviving Discussions About Metered Internet Access
• Google Breaks Precedent and Confirms Kicking Traffic-Power Out of Index
• What Holds Back Corporate Blogging
• European Newspapers Fight Battle Against Search Engines
• Tech Industry Testifies Before Congress on Chinese Censorship
• Google jabs DOJ for ‘cavalier attitude’ of data request
• Paid Search Sees Double-Digit Growth

Dave Sifry has reported on the state of the blogosphere, and folks, the State of the Blogosphere is strong.

He points out that attention has been shifting in the blogosphere. Mainstream media stalwarts like The New York Times, CNN, and The Washington Post [which he calls the "big head" (in contrast with the "long tail")] continue to dominate, but the long tail of the blogging world goes out to 27.8 million blogs.

Sifry summarized his post in bullet points:

• Blogging and Mainstream Media continue to share attention in blogger’s and reader’s minds, but bloggers are climbing higher on the “big head” of the attention curve, with some bloggers getting more attention than sites including Forbes, PBS, MTV, and the CBC.
• Continuing down the attention curve, blogs take a more and more significant position as the economics of the mainstream publishing models make it cost prohibitive to build many nice sites and media
• Bloggers are changing the economics of the trade magazine space, with strong entries covering WiFi, Gadgets, Internet, Photography, Music, and other nice topic areas, making it easier to thrive, even on less aggregate traffic.
• There is a network effect in the Technorati Top 100 blogs, with a tendency to remain highly linked if the blogger continues to post regularly and with quality content.
• Looking at the historical data shows that the inertia in the Top 100 is very low - in other words, the number of new blogs jumping to the top of the Top 100 as well as the blogs that have fallen out of the top 100 show that the network effect is relatively weak.
• The Magic Middle is the 155,000 or so weblogs that have garnered between 20 and 1,000 inbound links. [Great, only 19 more links to go.] It is a realm of topical authority and significant posting and conversation within the blogosphere.

In other words, the popular blogs are now more or less seen as legitimate news media. Before you go believing everything you read online though, keep in mind that the traditional news media aren’t always right either. Keep those critical thinking caps on.

… and maybe even find what you’re looking for.

A little while ago, I blogged about the prediction made by Bill Gates that soon search engines will need to share some of the wealth with their users in order to keep market share. I didn’t think the search engines were ever going to start handing out cash to us just for using their service any time soon, if ever.

But MSN Search is trying out a new gimmick, uh, I mean “promotion,” to lure searchers from Google and Yahoo — use MSN to conduct your searches and you might win an Xbox. Or a Baby Gap gift certificate.

On their Search and Win landing page at www.msnsearchandwin.com they explain:

“Simply search with MSN, click the Search and Win link in the results, and you could instantly win one of many fabulous prizes”

(Can’t you just hear Don Pardo: “one of many fahhhbulous prizes“)? Will people switching to MSN for the prizes keep using it after the novelty has worn off? Only if the results they find their are more relevant… and maybe not even then.

I don’t see this as a cost effective and sustainable way to grow their user base for the long haul.

It looks like they’re hedging their bets a bit, too: the search and win links are cleverly hidden in the PPC ad space… you know, the ad space no one looks at? So once you’re used to MSN as your regular search engine, you’ll probably forget the prizes.

There’s a very thorough review of Yahoo’s music download service on the Atlanta-Journal Constitution’s “super duper tech help blog.”

Geekboy writes of his explorations: “Music is a powerful thing. I was starting to like this. I felt ashamed. Like somehow I had betrayed geeks everywhere.” But he then goes on to outline what to me would be deal-breaker problems. Geekboy’s review of Yahoo Music Machine was posted today at ajc.com.

Nielsen/Netratings released its latest list of top search engines and terms late in January. No big surprise: U.S. market share for Google, Yahoo Search, and MSN Search stayed steady, with none gaining any large advantages late in 2005.

What was a surprise, according to the press release, was that the top search terms are the names of well-known domains. E.g., people on www.google.com type “yahoo” into the search box to get to www.yahoo.com.

I actually first heard about this phenomenon last summer during SES, but I guess the trend has grown. Five of the top 10 search terms are the names of search engines, and the first topical search term (”weather”) doesn’t show up on the list until #23.

Contrary to what one would assume about the general search ignorance of users who do this, Nielsen/Netrankings explains, the phenomenon can also be attributed to searchers who are very Internet literate. You see, many people have a search engine site set as their start page, and when this page loads the cursor just goes to the search field automatically. Using the mouse to move the cursor to the address bar is an extra step, when typing the URL of a site into the search field works just as well to bring you directly to the site. So you’re actually saving a click by navigating to another search engine by searching for it rather than typing the address in.

Neither the panelist nor the press release hazards a guess at what proportion of searchers who do this out of ignorance versus searchers who figured out how to shave another keystroke off their typing.

Last week, there was a lot of hullabaloo about MSN possibly renaming itself MSN Media Network, after the rumor was spotted on LiveSide. Was waiting on the final word before I mentioned it, but after a big flurry of coverage February 7 and 8, narry a word. The only place I’ve seen it mentioned since is on some spammy splog sites (which all seem like they’re owned by the same person). According to their editor, MSN has no intention of rebranding itself. Would have been an interesting move, since the “media portal” approach is working well for Yahoo.