Search Engine News from this week

Here are some of the search engine related articles and posts we have found interesting this week.

Can Google Detect an Affiliate Website?

Graywolf: The answer to that is slightly nuanced but, for simplicity’s sake, they don’t hate affiliate websites. Nor have I seen any evidence that shows affiliate sites are penalized.

Google New Shows You What’s New With Google Products

Google Tutor: Google New is a service launched by Google recently to help a Google fan stay abreast of all the new things and developments happening in the world of Google products, all at one page.

How To Find Public Domain Works with Google

What are public domain works, and how can you find them on the Web? (Wendy Boswell)

Kindle Secret Exposed: Popular Highlights Reveal Content That Clicks

Search Engine People: Readers can highlight passages on the Amazon Kindle. When your highlights sync with your Amazon Kindle account they get shared with Amazon. Amazon aggregates those highlights into Popular Highlights.

Bing Social now with added recommendations.

P Bradley: Bing Social Search is supposed to help by providing suggestions for people that you can follow, based on the searches that you run

47 sites you can use instead of Wikipedia

Wendy Boswell: Wikipedia is perhaps the most popular reference site online, with millions of high quality articles available on virtually any topic. However, there are limits to what Wikipedia can offer.

Microsoft’s Bing, bold bets face payoff test

Seattle Times interviews Steve Ballmer of Microsoft and Bing: “Our maps are better, our images our better, our picture is different. And Google keeps responding. In a sense, because we have lower share, it’s almost easier for us to try new things. They have to sort of stay conservative, they gotta make a lot of money.”

For Google, Open Is the New Closed

Google Watch: “Google CEO Eric Schmidt wowed (and scared) the crowd at TechCrunch Disrupt Sept. 28 when he talked about autonomous search and serendipity engines, but he also piqued curiosity by framing Google as open and Apple as closed. If you really think about it, Google’s open strategy can be limited by companies taking open-source platforms and adapting them for their own benefit. ”

Facebook Jumps Yahoo; Second Largest Video Site in U.S.

SE Watch: According to comScore Video Metrix, 178 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in August for an average of 14.3 hours per viewer

Google, Facebook Tout Serendipity Engines, Personalized Media

eweek: One day after Google CEO Eric Schmidt touted autonomous search as a serendipity engine where information comes to users instead of tracking them down, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said the future of media will be personalized.

Recapping Google’s new two-factor authentication

Google’s Matt Cutts: Two-factor authentication is something you have (e.g. a phone) and something you know (e.g. a password). It’s a Big Deal because if your account or business has two-factor authentication, those accounts are immediately less likely to be phished, hijacked, or otherwise abused. There’s a neat Google Authenticator application that runs on Android, iPhone, and Blackberry.

Microsoft Launches A New Loyalty Program: Bing Rewards

Search Engine Land: Prior Microsoft search loyalty programs, SearchPerks and Cashback, were retired. But maybe the third time’s the charm: today Microsoft is rolling out Bing Rewards Preview (beta). It’s a credit card or airline-style loyalty program that offers users credits that can be redeemed for products, gift cards or charitable donations.

Twitter leap-frogs MySpace in US web rankings

techradar: Twitter makes it into the top 50 web properties.

Propeller.com Spinning to a Stop

SE Watch: Propeller was the new name for NetScape’s social news experiment, a project which first emerged out of AOL as the killer app for the Netscape portal and originally led by Jason Calacanis of Weblogs Inc.

Google Instant Hasn’t Really Changes Traffic Referrals

SE Roundtable: As you know, Google Instant has changed how people search. But does that make a difference on how your pages are ranked, how people search and ultimately how people click on your Google listing to view your web site.

Google’s Bringing “Sexy” Back to Display Ads

Google believes that in 2015, 75 percent of ads on the web will be “social” in nature—across dozens of formats, sites and social communities. 50 percent of ad campaigns will include video ads bought on a cost-per-view basis (that means that the user will choose whether to watch the ad or not, and the advertiser will only pay if the user watches).

AOL Acquires TechCrunch and Mike Arrington is Really Excited About It

SE Journal: Arrington explains that nothing is going to change on the blog, they will continue to write and run it as they always have, and that is precisely what AOL wants them to do.

Official: Bing xRank Is Dead

SE Land: Launched in 2007, xRank was essentially Bing’s version of Google Trends, but with a number of additional features.

Google CEO Schmidt Pitches Autonomous Search, Flirts with AI

eweek: Google CEO Eric Schmidt said at TechCrunch Disrupt that the search engine’s next step is “autonomous search,” bringing information to users instead of making them seek it… This means Google will conduct searches for users without them having to manually conduct searches. As an example, Schmidt said he could be walking down the streets of San Francisco and receive information about the places around him on his mobile phone without having to click any buttons.