Phishers Enlist Google 'Dorks' (Dark Reading)

Researcher finds most phishing sites use Google search terms to locate vulnerable sites

Life Beyond Google: Some of the Best of the Rest
(FUMSI, United Kingdom)

Google is still the behemoth of search engines, but there is a plethora of alternative search engines that provide features not readily available on Google. They may not have Google's range of products and services but, after all, how many free unlimited-storage email services do you need?

This article cannot cover all the alternatives to Google. For that, check out http://AltSearchEngines.com, a web site devoted to monitoring the world of alternative search engines, complete with reviews of all those other search tools, hosted discussions between search engine representatives, interviews with search engine CEOs and jobs for search engine IT pros.

Is Google Not So Portal-Like After All?
(Search Engine Watch)

During the Orion Panel on universal search at last week's Search Engine Strategies conference, James Lamberti, SVP of search and media at comScore, presented new data that raised a series of new questions.

As Kevin Ryan reported in "Uncovering the Real Universal Search," comScore found that in only one week in January, of 1.2 billion search queries in the U.S., there were 220 million universal search results. That means 17 percent of all searches on Google showed at least one result with video, news, images, maps, weather, or stocks.

The data also showed that 57 percent of the 87 million people who searched during that week in January saw some type of universal search result. Of those, 38 percent saw a video result, 34 percent saw news, 19 percent saw images, and 15 percent saw multiple types of results.

Google is now sending 78 percent more downstream referrals to YouTube, 40 percent more to Google Maps, and 18 percent to Google Image Search than it was before universal search debuted last year on May 16. However, the data showed no growth in downstream referrals from Google to Google News.

Google's 'paid clicks' disappoint again
(MarketWatch)

Data from comScore indicate that Google's paid clicks in February rose only 3% compared with the same month a year earlier, a note by Bank of America analyst Brian Pitz said.

Paid clicks are the number of times Google search users click on a sponsored-search result, generating revenue from the company's advertising customers.

Google reported 25% growth in paid clicks in its fiscal fourth quarter ended in December. But comScore data released last month showed flat growth in Google's paid clicks in January, triggering concerns about its health amid the U.S. economic slowdown.

Google shares fell more than 3% lower in after-hours trading Wednesday, to $443.50.

Why SEO Doesn't Get the Respect It Deserves (ClickZ)

Marketing professionals who specialize in legitimate SEO (define) don't get a heck of a lot respect.

Why? I posed that question to search engine marketers attending Search Engine Strategies New York this week. […]

Google denies tax evasion charge
(People's Daily Online, China)

Google yesterday refuted the accusation of tax evasion but admitted failure to meet the tax deadline as it tried to "consult local authorities".

The company made the statement as Lee Kaifu, president of its China operation, was reported to have evaded personal income tax of at least 5 million yuan over the past two years.

According to the Shanghai Securities News, the Beijing taxation bureau was investigating the search engine's tax records and found Lee defaulted on income tax payment for two years. The newspaper also said Lee had paid the outstanding tax after an inspection.

Google was reported to be under tax investigation as some analysts said it might have evaded millions of yuan in taxes over the years.

Google started to offer Adwords services to Chinese citizens between 2000 and 2005 but it was reported that the transactions did no go via the local subsidiary, leaving no local records from which authorities could check for tax purpose.

Web creator rejects net tracking (BBC News)

The creator of the web [Sir Tim Berners-Lee] has said consumers need to be protected against systems which can track their activity on the internet.

Plans by leading internet providers to use Phorm, a company which tracks web activity to create personalised adverts, have sparked controversy.

Sir Tim said he did not want his ISP to track which websites he visited.

"I want to know if I look up a whole lot of books about some form of cancer that that's not going to get to my insurance company and I'm going to find my insurance premium is going to go up by 5% because they've figured I'm looking at those books," he said.

Sir Tim said his data and web history belonged to him.

He said: "It's mine - you can't have it. If you want to use it for something, then you have to negotiate with me. I have to agree, I have to understand what I'm getting in return."

NSA shifts to e-mail, Web, data-mining dragnet (The Iconoclast - politics, law, and technology - CNET News.com)

Recent evidence suggests that the NSA has been focusing on widespread monitoring of e-mail messages and text messages, recording of Web browsing, and other forms of electronic data-mining, all done without court supervision.

Taken together, those activities raise unique privacy and oversight concerns greater than those posed by large-scale monitoring of voice communications.

How to save money running a startup (17 really good tips) (calacanis.com)

I've got a bunch of tips on how to do this for business.

Among them:…

With Europe's OK, Google closes DoubleClick acquisition
(Tech news blog - CNET News.com)

European antitrust regulators on Tuesday approved Google's $3.1 billion merger with DoubleClick, paving the way for a blockbuster deal in Internet search and publisher-based advertising tools.

The Commission also analyzed the potential effects of nonhorizontal relationships between Google and DoubleClick, following concerns raised by third parties in the course of the market investigation.

These relationships concern DoubleClick's market position in ad serving, where Google, by controlling DoubleClick's tools, could allegedly raise the cost of ad serving for rival intermediaries, and Google's market position in search advertising and/or online ad intermediation services, where Google could allegedly have required purchasers of search ad space or intermediation to also purchase DoubleClick's tools.

"Instead of ensuring competition, (the Commission) and the FTC have literally paved the way for the emergence of a global digital duopoly over online advertising," the Center for Digital Democracy stated.

Google shares could fall another 20 percent
(Yahoo! News)

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Google Inc (GOOG.O), whose shares have plunged more than 40 percent since November, could fall almost another 20 percent due to the U.S. economic slowdown and aggressive spending by the Internet search engine company, according to the latest issue of Barron's.

"While a short-term bounce might follow the stock's swift descent, the shares are likely to head even lower if analysts start slashing their earnings estimates to reflect today's tougher operating environment, as they should be doing," the report said.

The article's headline questioned whether Google shares, which closed on Friday at $433.35, could be headed below $350.

Web search engines slow on the update
(Information World Review)

A researcher has uncovered serious shortcomings in how web search engines update their databases.

None of the search engines in a study by Dirk Lewandowski updated their results on the same day as there was a change in the web pages they were indexing.

“There’s simply no use in indexing a page daily if the search engine is not able to show this as a result on the same day,” said Lewandowski.

A Microsoft spokesperson said: “We are always working to improve the freshness of our index while ensuring we don’t waste webmaster bandwidth by downloading pages that change infrequently.

“We have recently made changes to our freshness strategy, including deploying support for conditional gets.”

Google had no comment to make on the findings.

Yahoo did not respond by the time we went to press.

Search Engine, Sputtr.com, Releases New Single Multi-Search Feature (Cheap Web Hosting Directory)

London, United Kingdom - March 5, 2008 - Multi-search engine, Sputtr, has released a major new feature, designed to provide users with the ability to actively participate in building the comprehensive search engine solution.

Steffen Hilgemann, Founder and CEO of Sputtr.com explained, ''This new feature allows our users to upload and submit completely new search engines to Sputtr's multi-search engine. By doing so, our users will actively contribute towards building the most comprehensive and user-friendly multi-search engine on the Internet today.

Sputtr already includes industry leaders such as Google, Yahoo, Ask, and many more. But in the future we would like to extend our reach to the thousands of alternative or niche search engines that today's internet users increasingly utilize to find relevant results in an ever more complex online world.''

The Unjustified Google Panic (Seeking Alpha)

Remember the panic which ensued when comScore (SCOR) announced that Google's paid-click rate was declining? Henry Blodget went so far as to call it a "Google Disaster", and the shares plunged.

But it turns out that the comScore data aren't nearly as disastrous as they might look at first blush. The company has a long blog entry on the subject which explains that it very much looks as though Google is doing this on purpose. In a nutshell, Google is running fewer ads, with higher minimum bids, which are more relevant for web searchers.

comScore Search Engine Rankings: Google Up, Double Digit Growth for MSN Live (Search Engine Watch Blog)

Rich search engines got richer in January in the monthly search engine rankings. Among the Top 50 properties worldwide some surprises surfaced this month as comScore reported total searches grew at a 7.9 percent clip.

Sites owned and operated by Google enjoyed 7.7 billion searches. No shock, maybe awe.

Yahoo sites again came in a distant second (2.5 billion searches) -- again growing at less than half Google's overall 8 percent rate.

Google.com grew even faster - 9.4 percent. YouTube's modest 2.6 percent growth rate slowed the core search engine down.

Microsoft sites at 1.1 billion searches means a combined Microsoft-Yahoo would only total 3.6 billion searches.

Search Engines Must Comply With Strict EU Privacy Rules (Mashable!)

What goes in the US doesn’t necessarily carry over to the European Union. European data privacy regulators issued a short report which says that all internet search engines, even those based outside Europe, must comply with EU privacy rules. Does this include Google, Microsoft and Yahoo? Yup. As the EU folks put it, “Search engines fall under the EU data protection directive if there are controllers collecting users’ IP addresses or search history information, and therefore have to comply with relevant provisions.”

These rules include users’ consent to their data being collected, as well as giving users the ability to object to or verify their personal information. The regulators, known under the “Article 29 Working Party” moniker, are working on a more detailed report; it will be interesting how it pans out, because users, for example, at this time don’t really have a good way of making Google change their personal data.

Reacting to the short report, Google gave the standard “we’re working with everyone to improve privacy online for all users” answer; Yahoo didn’t comment, while Microsoft said that companies should remove the IP address from saved information. The full report by the Article 29 Working Party is due in April.