Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) released its second In-House salary survey result. Despite the economic disorder, the result came out to be positive for the search marketers as an increase in the compensation was reported. Sara Holoubek, the President of SEMPO mentioned that even in recession period the result was good and signifies the brighter side of employment in the sales and marketing of search engine marketing sector.

The survey was done by SEMPO for more than 600 in-house SEO professionals. Conducted during the second quarter of this year it helped in reaching up to some major findings. For the year 2009, those having a relevant experience of 1-3 years gets an annual income ranging between $40,000 to $80,000. Whereas in the case of professionals like Senior manager, vice presidents and specialists it is different. Their annual income ranges between $70,000 to $120,000 for the former and between $160,000 to $250,000 for the later. The budgets of an In-house SEM are generally found below $50K or above $250K with some of them lying in between.

The survey also revealed that a major section of professionals worked with an aim to increase and maintain the ROI. Search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns being the most prominent factors that helped in increasing the ROI. An expansion in the organic marketing activities has also been seen. The practitioners took several steps needed for broadening the online marketing activities. Some of the activities included were organic SEO and SEM programs, social media campaigns, email marketing, graphical ad campaigns, paid inclusion programs, vertical search engine targeting, affiliate marketing programs, and shopping engines. The most striking finding of the survey was that the changing impression of search marketing from IT/programming to marketing

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SEMPO Announces Second In – House Salary Survey Result

Twitter has unveiled its new homepage, that features search box at the core. Then, the trending topics get a noticeable position below the search box with three categories. The top row with the biggest font features topics that are hot currently, followed by the second row with slightly smaller font featuring hot topics from the past day and the third row with topics from the past week.

Twitter has always been working to improve the site. Ever since its introduction it has evolved into a multifaceted real-time tool. It is always nice to look forward for something new from Twitter!

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New Twitter Homepage Gets Search At Its Core

IxQuick, one of my favourite meta search engines and what it bills itself as “the world's most private search engine” has renamed itself to Startpage. Name change apart, there is no difference in the existing search engine.

The meta search engine has been known for using privacy as a marketing feature, which set it part from many other search engines. In 2006, shortly before the mistaken release of three months of AOL search data, IxQuick announced that it would remove its users personal data within 48 hours. Last January, it stopped recording IP addresses completely and started offering secure searching via the https protocol, which further enhanced the search engine's leadership in privacy. Big three search engines- Google, Yahoo and Microsoft/Bing still keep user data for nine months, three months and eighteen months respectively.

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IxQuick Now Becomes Startpage

The much awaited search engine Wolfram Alpha has finally gone live with a few glitches here and there. The search engine is believed to be of Google's stature is speculated to give tough competition to its popular rival. Wolfram Alpha was in development stage for five years before it was finally launched on 18th of May. Brainchild of physicist Dr Stephen Wolfram, Wolfram Alpha is first of its kind "computational knowledge engine" i.e it stores and searches its own huge database to give specific results. Unlike Google, yahoo or any other search engine it does not come out with useless search results not even remotely related to the topic. If it is unable to find the required information it pulls up a error page but does not pull out gibberish. In short, it tries to understand the user query first and then reply with specific answer if available.

Google Vs Wolfram Alpha

• less computation time More computation time
• Multiple results oriented Specific result oriented

As a response to the launch of Wolfram Alpha, Google has also doled out its new tool Google Squared. Like Alpha, Google Squared also returns specific search result on the specific query. Though Wolfram Alpha is appreciated for its search specific results and extensive database but still it will be hard for it to break the convention. Since most of the time users use wrong search keyword, in that case pulling up multiple pages will only provide necessary assistance. The system which is now in its nascent stages is believed to undergo more serious transformations to be able to provide refined information on new and more topics as per the user's requirement.

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Wolfram Alpha up and Running

Interesting changes are headed for twitter search in the coming days. Santosh Jayaram, the Twitter’s new VP of Operations, said, “Twitter Search will begin to start crawling the links which are posted in tweets and index the content of those pages. Instead of simply indexing the tweets of its users, Twitter Search will now offer search technology which will transform it into more of an open window of the live conversations and real time indexing which is happening within the Twitter community.”

Here's a screen preview of Twitter Search:

According to Needleman reports, Twitter Search, which currently only searches for Twitter posts will now add a new reputation ranking system. It will take into account user's reputation who wrote the tweet, and ranked its results based on the reputation. Although, no exact information have been provided about the reputation calculation. It is believed that it will be built upon trust factors and influence.

In simple words, Twitter improves its search capabilities by indexing its web pages and reputation ranking. These improvements will surely enhance the company's outstanding leverage in the future.

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Twitter Improves its Search Capabilities by Indexing Pages and Reputation Ranking

Jimmy Wales announced a few days ago, the closure of Wikia Search due to the ongoing economic recession. Wikia Search was designed with the primary purpose to allow users determine the rankings of sites and pages for all other users.

Wales summed up the decision like this,

“In a different economy, we would continue to fund Wikia Search indefinitely. It’s something I care about deeply. I will return to again and again in my career to search, either as an investor, a contributor, a donor, or a cheerleader.

But for now, we will be closing the doors on the Wikia Search project (as of March 31, 2009) and will be re-directing and refocusing resources on other Wikia.com properties, especially on Wikianswers. Join me there to help provide freely licensed answers to all the world’s questions.”

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Closure of Wikia Search for Now!

Tim Armstrong, (ex Google executive) replaces AOL CEO Randy Falco, who was on the job since November 2006. Armstrong was associated with Google since the year 2000 and it is not the first time when AOL has recruited a Google executive for its chief positions. According to a Press Release by Rachel Metz, AP Technology Writer:

'Tim Armstrong, who had been a senior vice president at Google and head of the company's North and South American advertising operations, replaces AOL CEO Randy Falco, a veteran TV executive who took the job in November 2006. Falco, along with Ron Grant, AOL's president and chief operating officer, are leaving AOL.

"If he wanted challenges, he picked a great place for challenges," Lee said.'

Courtesy Associated Press

All in all, it would be interesting to see how Armstrong handles the affair.

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AOL hires Google's Armstrong as new CEO

You read it right. Inquisitor is now on iPhone. The announcement is made by the Official Yahoo! Blog and users can get this plugin on their iPhones right now!

“Inquisitor Mobile Search auto-completes your search and gives suggestions as you type to refine your search. When you type in your query, websites and suggestions appear immediately below the search box. Inquisitor also speeds up your search by quickly loading site summaries and allowing you to navigate between results and the browser with just one click.” – Ariel Seidman and David Watanabe,
Yahoo! Search

Here is the download link

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Inquisitor On Your iPhone!

According to Hitwise Data (PDF FILE),

1. More than half of all search queries are at least three words long.
2. More than a third are four words or longer than that.

That means that Internet users are typing long words in different search engines as a part of their search queries. Have a look at this table that gives us a deeper insight on all the observations concerned with search queries:

It is easily depicted from the above table that 1- and 2- word queries are almost losing their impact and are becoming less common to see. On the other hand, word queries with 4, 5 (up to 8 ) words are becoming quiet a trend these days. That is why more and more webmasters are concentrating on creating contents based on long search queries these days!

The same announcement also stated these words: “Google’s search share held steady at 72% in January. Yahoo also held steady at 17.8%. MSN/Live Search saw a slight drop from the month before, while Ask saw a slight increase.”

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Hitwise Report: "Search Queries Are Getting Longer"

Mobile phones have come a long way since the initial days. Search engines are available at your fingertips, stock market revolves around your mobile set and cricket scores are just a click away! What else can you ask for!

Further the availability of iPhone and Android, has even added a new dimension to this local live search. They come with GPS navigation and help one to access all content, data and maps in seconds. And now Google has even refined the appearance of its search page when you browse through your iPhone or iPod touch.

In addition to conducting manual Google searches through Google Search application, iPhone users can now conduct searches using “Voice-Based search”, a feature that makes use of voices and is getting immensely popular and viable, all thanks to the enhancement in speech recognition technology. In this case, spoken prompts guide the users to know about their relevant queries. Amazing enough!

Smartphones are marking their existence with a bang.

“A new consumer study of U.S. mobile phone users revealed that 18.9 percent of mobile consumers now use a smartphone. It also showed that 49.2 percent of those
surveyed plan to buy an advanced mobile device within the next two years.”

Booth, senior vice president and program director, Interactive Local Media, The Kelsey Group said, "The implication is that users will increasingly turn to their smartphones for local commercial and social search experiences, and the data certainly suggest this is already happening."

People are flocking in to Livesearchmobile and now we know why! It is all about enhancing business ventures, socializing with others, performing a live search on mobile, navigate different sites, find latest news item, get turn by turn driving directions, and everything that you can ever imagine of! And not to forget the advertising revenue through PPC, adwords and other advertising campaigns.

Then you have GoogleSearch technology that provides the option of local search along with other features like Gmail, YouTube, Orkut, maps and more.
Or if you are addicted to Yahoo, then this one is for you: Yahoo on Mobile!

Here is one more finding: “Nearly 1.3 billion mobile users – 30% of the subscriber base – are expected to utilise local mobile search services by 2013, according to a new report from industry analysts, Juniper Research.”

Additional findings from the Juniper report include:

• Local search is expected to account for 43% of cumulative mobile search advertising revenues between 2008 and 2013.
• User response rates to advertising which supports mobile local search are expected to be significantly higher than for advertising on general mobile web search.
• While Western Europe currently accounts for the greatest volume of mobile search enquiries, it will soon be overtaken by the Far East & China region primarily through a surge in adoption within China itself.

The mobile users are using Internet at a much faster pace then ever before. Have a look at this Screen shot:

Almost all mobile carriers are equipped with local mobile search offerings, provided the handset supports it. Certainly the local search on mobile phones are on a roll!

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Rise In Local Search- Thanks To Technology!

Chinese search giant Baidu has received lots of suspicions for its so-called “Baidu Bidding Ranking program”. China Central Television and main competitor Google were the main critics of the program run by Baidu.

News has spread that some competitors have even filed a lawsuit in the local court to get a justified answer.

Baidu gave a prompt response on this issue stating that it has closed all the bidding rank campaign because of some quarrel generating keywords. Along with this, Baidu has strengthened its governing policies regarding Bidding Ranking program. More remedial measures are now expected to be carried out in order to regain Baidu’s high public recognition.

CCTV criticized Baidu by saying that it only wants money and pays a little attention on checking the legal status of all the bidding ranking advertisers.

Now the question that comes in our mind is: Will the Baidu issue influence general public to look for an alternative search engine? There is nothing to be afraid of, until Google can catch up. But according to a study, it has been found that Google can not catch up with Baidu for the coming 1 or 2 years because Google does not have any idea of market and its all about

According to Sterne Agee & Leach analyst James Lee “there might be some consumers, who found their way to unlicensed private clinics and other health centers by finding their ads, when searched for health related topics on Baidu”.

E-commerce times stated that such damage to Baidu’s reputation can provide more strengthening opportunities to Google because Chinese consumes will now view Baidu’s search results less pure than Google.

But according to a report, Baidu was not actually doing anything illegal as there are no laws in China, which can prevent Baidu from accepting ads from such organizations. Baidu does not even have the responsibility to find out the legitimate nature of these organizations.

All such claims have sparked widespread criticism about Baidu and this is affecting Baidu’s stock as well. CEO of Baidu, Mr. Ronin Li has promised to take action against the matter. He also told that Baidu has removed the keywords for all the four clients named in the report. Baidu is now checking the licenses of all the hospitals and pharmaceutical companies listed in its website.

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Baidu Finally Taking Steps to Rescue Its Reputation!

Amazon is taking opportunity of Thanksgiving day by releasing the bad news of shutting one of its web service i.e. Alexa Web Search. This service provides programmatic access to Alexa’s web search engine. Introduced in 2006, the service is already closed to new customers but the existing users can utilize it till January 26, 2009.

Amazon has mentioned in its mail sent to developers that the reason of closing the service is its low usage. Most of us agree with the point as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft offer more competent services. On the Alexa Web Search site, you will find Amazon saying that the service has been deprecated.

The email sent to developers by Amazon was:

Dear Alexa Developer,

The Alexa Web Services Team.

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Amazon Closing Alexa Web Search Service!

The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization has launched its fifth annual State-of-the-SEM Market Survey.

SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization) recently announced its fifth industry-wide survey in order to assess the economy's effect on the annual online marketing spending and the change in budget allocation across the various media segments. The economical turbulences felt all over the world this year make it extremely important to evaluate each and every spending decision. Although Search Engine and Internet marketing is expected to grow in a robust fashion, it is important to understand the impact of the the latest economic happenings on the same. The annual survey's primary objective is to not only explore more about this impact and give a reality check on the current state of search marketing budgets, but also to give an idea of what to expect in this field in the next year.

The market survey is SEMPO's fifth successive survey in as many years and is open to all SEM professionals working in an agency or in-house corporate position. The 4th SEMPO SEM Market Survey conducted in the year 2007 got around 900 responses and this year's survey promises to go beyond that figure. The deadline of the same is January 15, 2009.

The survey provides all Search Engine Marketers a crucial opportunity to get their voices heard by Search Engines. SEMPO is partnering with Incisive Media, the producers of the Search Engine Strategies (SES) conferences, and Radar Research, a Los Angeles-based research and consulting firm, to conduct this Survey. All SEM professional have a further incentive in participating in the Survey. One lucky winner would be awarded an SES 2009 full conference pass, which is valued at $1995. Moreover, SEMPO will also be awarding an iPod Touch to a random participant of the survey.

All the survey participants will be provided access to early survey results via a webcast hosted by the SEMPO Research Committee. The preliminary results of the survey will be available in February, 2009 and a full report is expected to be declared in April, 2009.

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SEMPO's 5th Annual State-of-the-SEM Market Survey

All that happened in the world of search engines in the first week of August. Once again, the blogs are all in chronological order. Enjoy!

Yahoo! Finally Gives a New Face to Yahoo! Site Explorer!:

According to the Yahoo! Search Blog, Yahoo! has finally given its Site Explorer the long overdue facelift with an entirely new interface, giving the Site Explorer an all new look and feel. You can check out the new Yahoo! Site Explorer.

Microsoft Rolls Out Another Upgrades for Microsoft adCenter!:

Microsoft has sent an e-mail to all the advertisers, in which it talks about the new upgrades that it has rolled out for adCenter. These new features have been incorporated on the behest of numerous advertisers who had been feeling inadequate due to the loss of certain features in the adCenter accounts. With the new features, the advertisers will be able to take control of their credit card payments along with keyword research data that can be used to optimize their campaigns more effectively.

Google Tweaking the SERPS again?:

According to Digital Forums, either the August Google SERP update is still underway, or Google might have introduced a new algorithm altogether, as the SERP rankings are going bonkers.

Google Finally Speaks About the Ranking Software Blockade!:

Over at the Google Groups, Matt Cutts and JohnMu have finally spoken up about why and how Google blocks ranking checking tools.

Google Patches Up the Blogger Crawling Issues Along With Pending Sitemaps Concerns!:

Now according to Search Engine Roundtable, Google has finally fixed this issue, along with the concerns of Google's Blogger tool and Sitemaps not working well together that had been plaguing the blogging community. Via a thread at Google Groups, JohnMu has announced the rectification of these concerns.

iNet Acquires Search Marketing Standard Magazine!:

As per the publisher of Search Marketing Standard, Boris Mordkovich, the reputed online magazine has been acquired by iNET Interactive, which is a social media company. Although the acquisition took place in the month of July this year, still, due to the necessary changes that had to be made, the merger is to be formally announced on August 20th 2008.

These are the news, reviews and events that have marked their impact on the Search Engine Industry this week. Sit tight for more news from this ever evolving domain. Have a great weekend!

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Weekly Recap of Top Search Engine Related Stories-August 4th Week!

One of India's national newspaper, Hindu, recently reported that India's highest court of justice, the Supreme Court, notified the Centre, Google India, Yahoo India and Microsoft Corporation, trying to impose a ban on these online search engines, which have been unlawfully promoting sex selection techniques.

In a country that is characterized by stark gender inequalities, the Indian Law imposes strict action against the sale or advertisement of those facilities that allow parents to determine the sex of their unborn child. After having successfully wiping these off the television, radio and newspapers, the Indian courts are now striving to include the online media to this list.

Dr. Sabu Mathew George filed a writ petition against the three websites, highlighting the violation of the 'Preconception and Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques Act'. A three-Judge Bench of Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan and Justices P. Sathasivam and J.M. Panchal subsequently issued notice on this writ. Dr. George wants the Supreme Court to give the Center a direction to take punitive and deterrent action against the three companies.

This has been a giant leap by the Indian law-givers in demonstrating that everything in this country is subservient to equality and justice.

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The Indian Supreme Court Warns Google, Yahoo! And Microsoft For Encouraging Sex Selection Techniques!

All that happened in the world of search engines in the first week of August. Once again, the blogs are all in chronological order. Enjoy!

How to Save Googlebot the Trouble of Crawling Infinite Space!:

Google has now started to inform the Webmasters via the Webmaster Tools message center, whenever such an anomaly is discovered. Because the issue of infinite space can cause inconvenience to the Webmasters, therefore it is imperative that they get their websites verified with Webmaster Tools. Frequent check of the Webmaster Tools message center would also serve as an added advantage.

Has Google Blocked WebPosition Ranking Software for Good?:

It seems that after a long history of threatening to ban automated rank checking softwares, Google has finally closed its doors on one of the most popular search engine ranking software, WebPosition.

Google SERP August 2008 Changes, webmasters Concerned and Confused!:

Google has begun its SERP changes for August 2008. Webmasters have been reporting of numerous ranking changes and some Webmasters are even witnessing the resurrection of defunct 301 HTML pages from their old websites. The odd part being, that these pages haven't been indexed for the last two months and yet they are being displayed at the top of the search results.

Yahoo! Weather Report. Yahoo! to Roll Out August 2008 Search Index Update!:

Yahoo! has announced that it would be rolling out its 'Weather Update', that would include changes in the crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms. The expected update will continue for a couple of days, but Yahoo! expects to finish it soon.

As usual, we are expecting numerous uncalled for ranking changes and page shuffling in the index, but Yahoo! Hopes to finish the update as soon as possible.

Google To Add Relevant Custom Titles to Incomplete Search Results?

Google has announced via the Official Google Blog that, it will now automatically add relevant titles to the search results, that have incomplete titles. Google will be assigning relevant titles according to the content of the page and would induct it into its search index.

Google Launches Google Insights For Advertisers- “See what the world is searching for”!

Since Google's update to Google Trends was very well received with a lot of positive feedback, Google has now announced via the Google Inside AdWords Blog the launch of Google Insights for Search This product is designed specifically for the advertisers, as it will provide enhanced flexibility and functionality giving the marketers a better understanding of search behavior.

Microsoft Webmaster Tools Finally Out of BETA and Updated!:

To the uninitiated, in November last year, Microsoft had launched the Live Search Webmaster Tools and since then, the tool has been running in BETA mode.

However, now Microsoft has announced, that it has finally taken the Live Search Webmaster Tools out of BETA and has updated this tool with some significant additions. These new features are aimed at providing the Webmasters with more in-depth information as to how their websites are crawled and indexed by Live Search.

Google seems to be inflicting intense penalties for misusing 301 Re-directs!:

According to Webmaster World, some of the Webmasters used the 301 Redirects far too many times and had to face the consequences. As per Tedster (a prominent member of the Webmaster World), the penalties levied on Webmasters for the misuse of 301 Redirects can be quite harsh, including, Google eying your website with suspicion almost forever. However, Google does allow re-consideration requests in case of penalties for wrong 301 Redirects.

These are the news, reviews and events that have marked their impact on the Search Engine Industry this week. Sit tight for more news from this ever evolving domain. Have a great weekend!

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Weekly Recap of Top Search Engine Related Stories-August 2nd Week!

All that happened in the world of search engines in the first week of August. Once again, the blogs are all in chronological order. Enjoy!

Google Takes Down Average Position Indicators in the Content Network!:

Over at PPC Hero John reports that, Google has begun the removal of Content Network average position indicators or figures. In place of the position indicators, Google is now displaying 'N/A' (not available) to the users.

Google Testing SERPs. Displays Related Queries below Search Results!:

Over at the SEOBOOK, Aaron Wall reports that Google seems to be testing a new feature in its search engine result pages (SERPs). According to the reports, Google seems to be displaying a “Related” category under the each search result. When you click on the link in the “Related” category, you get new results that do provide any reference to the the initial query that you ran in Google.

Microsoft Live Search Gets a New Look with 'Hotspots'!:

Via the Live Search Blog, Microsoft has announced that, due to the positive feedback it has received from users, the same background images have now officially been inculcated in the Live Search home page. The images that would be displayed in the new Live Search page will be changed frequently and will also have highlighted areas in the image itself. These highlighted areas are known as 'hotspots' and can be explored with the click of a button. These hotspots will produce search results related to themselves. As of now, these new changes have been rolled out for users in the United States alone. However, Microsoft assures that the changes for the Live Search home page would be reflected in other regions shortly.

Google to Provide More Transparency for Customized Search Results!:

Via the Official Google Blog, Google has announced that it has begun some changes in the Google Web Search that would enable the users to be more informed as to how the search results have been customized. This feature will be visible in a couple of days, in the form of a message located in the upper right corner of the search results page.

Google's newest competitor, Cuil it seems is not half as Cool!:

The recent launch of another search engine, named Cuil (pronounced cool), was a simple reiteration of this fact. Though Cuil has been crafted and developed by former Google compatriots, Anna Patterson, Russell Power and Louis Monier, the overall product was not even a close second to Google.

Microsoft Talk about 'BrowseRank'- A Step Beyond PageRank?:

News.com, reports that a Microsoft research team has recently come up with a new concept known as BrowseRank. Through this concept, Microsoft has tried to teach Google a thing or two about ranking pages. According to the new theory, BrowseRank can prove to be more effective than PageRank as it would rank pages according to the user online behavior and not by the amount of web pages linked to a specific web page as done by Google PageRank.

The Web World Spawns Further With Google Index Hitting The 1 Trillion Mark!:

You only expect big news from one of the biggest and the most preferred search engine of the world. Yes, we are talking about Google that started out with a great beginning of its indexing procedure where it indexed about 26 million pages in its debutant year in 1998. This beginning, however seems quite modest now as the Official Google Blog has confirmed the achievement of a groundbreaking new milestone – the whooping one trillion mark has been bagged by the industrious Google search engineers. Google has made the web world more useful and exciting for its users by facilitating them with the access to 1 trillion unique URLs on the web, all at once.

These are the news, reviews and events that have marked their impact on the Search Engine Industry this week. Sit tight for more news from this ever evolving domain. Have a great weekend!

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Weekly Recap of Top Search Engine Related Stories- August 1st Week!

It was almost a decade ago that Google established itself as the principal search engine in the web world and since then has hardly faced competition that can be put into the record books. The recent launch of another search engine, named Cuil (pronounced cool), was a simple reiteration of this fact. Though Cuil has been crafted and developed by former Google compatriots, Anna Patterson, Russell Power and Louis Monier, the overall product was not even a close second to Google.

The Search Engine Watch.Com blog states, "So how is Cuil different than Google? They're claiming bragging rights for search index size: 120 billion Web pages. While Patterson says that's 3X the size of Google's index, most people acknowledge that size doesn't matter."

The search engine land blog sharing similar concerns for Cuil, stated, "Indeed, the established players of Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask.com — all of whom have established quality search products — haven't dented Google either. So what makes Cuil worthy of special attention?"

In the midst of brutal judgments being passed around within merely two days of its launch, Cuil seems to have received some hopeful feedback from TechCrunch, which quotes, "Where Cuil excels is with the related categories, which return results that are extremely relevant. Cuil does a good job of guessing what we’ll want next and presents that in the top right widget. That means Cuil saves time for more research based queries. And I want to reemphasize that Cuil is only an hour old at this point, Google has had a decade to perfect their search engine."

People who have analyzed this new kid on the block are rather disappointed with the format and display pattern of the search result pages. The 3-column format of the result pages, the 10-size font of the words used on them and the inability to view the result pages in list format have discouraged web users to go the Cuil way. Others have problems with its search processing speed and the lack of relevance in the search results.

Once you make a pit stop at Cuil, you will know if its 'cool' enough for you.

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Google's newest competitor, Cuil it seems is not half as Cool!

All that happened in the world of search engines in the fourth week of July 2008. Once again, the blogs are all in chronological order. Enjoy!

Google Gives a Heads-Up for an Upcoming PageRank Update!

Matt Cutts, via his blog has taken the first ever initiative by Google to inform Webmasters of an upcoming update. This time, Matt has informed the Webmasters that Google would be updating the toolbar PageRank within a few days. This would lessen the confusion and the chaos that usually follows when an update is carried out by Google.

Also, with the revelation of these details, Matt has also announced, much to the joy of many Webmasters that, Google would be revoking some of the older penalties that had been levied on websites by Google.

Google Launches KNOL- A Stark Competitor to Wikipedia!

Via the Official Google Blog, Google has announced the launch of 'Knol'. Derived from the word 'knowledge', Knol is a knowledge platform based on authoritative articles about specific topics, written by people who know about those subjects. It is yet another addition to the growing number of free information based websites, such as, Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers, About.com. Also, just like Wikipedia, Knol will deliver reliable and relevant information, absolutely free of cost.

Facebook to Get Microsoft Live Search as Default Search Engine!

According to Market Pilgrim, Microsoft has struck a search and advertising deal with Facebook. With the implementation of this deal, MSN would be able to integrate Live Search and Microsoft search advertising into Facebook. However, the financial and exclusive details of the deal are still a closely guarded secret.

Yahoo! Finally Closes Curtains on Yahoo! Ambassador!

In May this year, we had informed our readers that Yahoo! was possibly in the process of dropping its Search Marketing Program called 'Ambassador'.

Yahoo! has now decided to terminate the Ambassador program and in lieu of this decision, Yahoo! has been sending out e-mails to make Yahoo! Ambassadors aware of its decision. The same was received by us as well stating that, Yahoo! will be shutting down the Ambassador program altogether by September 30th 2008.

Google Releases New Feature for Google AdWords. Keywords & Placements Now Combined Together!

Via the Google AdWords Blog, Google has announced the release of a new feature for Google AdWords, that would allow the advertisers to combine keyword-targeted and placement-targeted campaigns into a single online campaign type.

These are the news, reviews and events that have marked their impact on the Search Engine Industry this week. Sit tight for more news from this ever evolving domain. Have a great weekend!

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July 2008, Week 4, Weekly Round Up of Important Search Engine Related Happenings!

It's Search Engine Rankings time again and ComScore has released its findings for the'U.S. Search Engine Rankings for June 2008'. According to the new results, search engines like Microsoft and Yahoo! have finally gained some ground, but they still aren't even close enough to make Google drop a sweat. According to ComScore, Google is still way ahead of any other search engine, when it comes to raw number of searches for the month of June.

In April 2008, I had covered the ComScore U.S search engine rankings and even then, Google was still the king as it is now. According to the new results, for the month of June, around 11.5 billion searches were conducted throughout America, that is being considered as a 7% increase, than in the month of May. Google continued to maintain its hold in the search engine realm with a 61.5% searches. Yahoo! recorded 20.9% searches, that is a slight gain from the figure of 20.6% in May. Microsoft also recorded a gain of almost 1%, by touching the figure of 9.2%, while its figure in May was 8.5%.

Image Courtesy: ComScore

For the month of June, Google continued to show, that it is the most preferred search engine in the United States, with 7 billion core searches (up 6%). Yahoo! Recorded 2.4 billion core searches (up 9%) and Microsoft recorded more than 1 billion core searches (up 15%).

Image Courtesy: ComScore

Google again led the way, when it came to expanded searches for the month of June. These results combined the search engines their affiliated websites. As per the results, Google sites showed 9.6 billion searches (up 9%), Yahoo! Sites came in second with 2.6 billion searches (up 8%), Microsoft recorded 1.1 billion searches (up 14%), followed closely by AOL LLC with 792 million searches.

Image Courtesy: ComScore

These were the U.S. Search Engine Rankings for June 2008 as recorded by ComScore. One of the factors that can be associated with the rise of Microsoft's figures is the launch of the 'Live Search Cash Back Program', that was initiated in the month of May and could have contributed to the result figures. The results clearly show that, inspite of Google's constant grip on the search engine market, other veterans like Yahoo! and Microsoft have showed improvements and can be expected to continue this steady progress in future.

Click here to subscribe to our RSS feed to get a daily digest of news around search engine industry. PageTraffic SEO Blog is updated four times a day and is ranked as one of the best search engine resources blog by Pandia!

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ComScore June 2008 U.S. Search Engine Rankings- MSN & Yahoo! Gain Ground, but Google still Rules!