It is once again Thanksgiving, the time of the year when we thank our Lord for his abundant blessings and grace upon us. And also a time for most of the search engines to come out with their creative logos to depict how they perceive this day to be.

The famous Google Doodle for Thanksgiving has Snoopy at its star donning the chef’s hat and the equally famous roast Turkey and mashed potatoes. The logo exudes warmth and homeliness, two qualities which capture the main essence of this day.

Yahoo’s logo for the day was quite mellow with autumn leaves strewn around and also showed a pumpkin, a vegetable for the rich and poor alike. AOL had a logo which was predominantly blue and was more of Halloween than Thanksgiving. A witch’s hat was displayed along with pumpkins as if to say ‘trick or treat.’

Bing displayed a screensaver than a logo which depicted a giant turkey walking down the road held by many people with ropes. There was a caption that said ‘Don’t let today’s turkey dinner spoil tomorrow’s waistline. Can you feel the burn?’ But this line takes away the entire concept of a turkey dinner where diets should be forgotten completely.

Ask.com also depicted turkeys which have become synonymous with Thanksgiving; the picture showed two turkeys waiting near the shore looking out a ship sailing by and a caption that said ‘Why do we eat turkeys on Thanksgiving?’ Dogpile.com showed a bunch of doggie buddies around a table having a feast along with the caption ‘Happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy the traditions of this festive holiday!’

Cre8astie forums had a picture which showed turkeys and a tray filled with fruits and a goblet of wine. A man carrying a tray of roast turkey was the logo on PPC Heros. And to end, Search Engine Roundtable displayed pumpkins and turkeys along with the caption ‘Pulse of the Sear.’

Once again, wishing everybody a Happy Thanksgiving.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Anyone who has used the internet would know that when you type in a wrong domain address, like Twiter.com with a ‘T’ missing, you will be immediately directed to a page featuring many ads. This is not very surprising but what is really surprising is the fact that Google and Yahoo earn money out of those ads.

Google runs a program which was earlier known as DomainPark and currently goes by the name, AdSense for Domains. What it basically does is if you have an attractive domain with no content to feature, then this program lets you showcase lucrative ads on the page. This practice which is known as domaining is perfectly legal as most users tend to join words together and enter domain names to find any relevant information pertaining to that topic. The users are not really misled and the domainers stand to gain by earning money.

Many people would be of the opinion that domaining is equal to spamming but this is not entirely true. Along with all the legitimate stuff that happens on the internet, there are many spam tactics like typo traffic that is not very desirable. Typo domains simply cash in on another domain’s fame which is not very legit.

Domainers would want to argue that a typo domain is basically the user’s mistake like dialing a wrong phone number but I would say making money out of someone’s mistake is also a wrong thing to do. There have been objections raised arguing that this is not the wrongdoing of any domain owner but the fault lies on the part of the companies which are supplying these ads and thereby violating certain guidelines and policies.

At the end of it all, the user who typed in a wrong domain address never really gets directed to the real page he is looking for; instead he has to get contented with all the unnecessary ads which promise so many things and end up making big domain owners rich.

Popularity: 2% [?]

The three major search engines, Yahoo, Google and Bing have removed GeoCities.com domain from their search indices but you can still find some zombie GeoCities sites online. Anyone who searches for the site geocities.com on Yahoo, Google and Bing Search will see a message displayed that this site does no longer exist.

Yahoo had announced earlier during this year that it planned to close down the domain GeoCities, a free web hosting service, on October 26th of this year. But most users were still able to access this site after this date too; finally Yahoo pulled the plug on GeoCities by the end of October. And along with it disappeared millions of WebPages, images, URL’s and everything else associated with the domain. But most importantly, millions of links have also vanished which is huge when seen from an SEO perspective but small in the web’s overall link graph.

Google was the first website among the three to remove GeoCities from its search index. A Google spokesperson reported on Friday that once the domain was shut down, the pages were fragmented and broken; so the company took immediate action to avoid users from landing on broken pages and not finding the right information.

Yahoo followed suit and zapped the domain by early morning on Friday and Bing removed GeoCities by the end of the weekend. It was also removed by Ask.com and AOL search by November 3rd from its indices. But the fact remains that the domain is still not completely buried and you could find a few websites still active if you use Yahoo search.

Some of these zombie GeoCities pages are www.geocities.com/bolerama/ and www.geocities.com/bradreviews/. You could also find a couple others which were tweeted by Range Online Media through Twitter. These seem to be GeoCities Plus sites which the user can still access but cannot use the tools required to manage the site.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Yahoo seems to have hit a rough patch with its search engine but is still trying to convince everyone that it is very much ‘in search.’

In the earnings call that was conducted earlier this week, Yahoo’s CFO Tim Morse said that the company is planning to create a better, enriching and relevant search experience. According to him, Yahoo intends to differentiate themselves from the others in the rat race without investing billions, yet generating relevant search results. He also said that the company’s aim is to develop new search experiences for its global users.

All this talk does not seem to be convincing the bigwigs of the search industry who still believe that Yahoo is out of search. Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin also voiced his disappointment in the ‘abdication’ of Yahoo search; he said this at an interview with John Battelle at the Web2.0 event which was hosted in San Francisco on the 22nd of this month.

When asked about his opinion on the various search engines, Brin commented that he like Microsoft Bing which is really doing its job in the competitive search market. He also mentioned the names Powerset and Cuil before going on to say that it is really a shame that Yahoo is moving out of search. When the interviewer asked him about his opinion on the Microsoft-Yahoo search deal, he said that he is no one to talk about it but also added that Yahoo has been doing a lot of interesting things in the past and should continue sticking on to those.

Though we do not have any concrete or official information as of yet about Yahoo search, we too can go by the opinion that things seem to have gone out of control for the company as far as search is concerned. Let’s wait and watch.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Twitter has once again confirmed the fact that they are not going to allow other search engines access to their private tweets. Because of the recurrent confusion regarding this matter, the website has decided to do something more concrete so that such false rumors do not do the round any more.

The report about the so called ‘Twitter hole’ appeared in the LA Times; according to this report, Google had some kind of a special access to all the private tweets which have been actually protected by its owners from being made public. In reply to this, TechCrunch clarified that this access to protected tweets that Google was given was before these account holders had locked down their accounts and protected their tweets. If the account has been made private after the tweets are released then they cannot be un-cached; this should pretty much clear the confusion that arose out of the whole Google episode.

Twitter has made this point quite clear on its help page where it says that if you have a public account and has decided to make it private, then all the updates after the time of protection will be locked and made private. But all the tweets before the time of protection will still be public to any other user. This rule goes for all websites including Google and Topsy which is a Twitter-specific search engine.

Google always relies on the last information it has in hand and hence will keep re-visiting the tweets that were posted before the account was locked and this will go on for a few weeks or months. But Topsy only displays public tweets; once the account is protected, a click on the refresh button and all the tweets vanish.

It is finally up to the account holder to make sure your tweets are accessed by only those who you want to follow you or you might end up getting retweeted for some of your private tweets.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Yahoo formally announced on the fifteenth of this month that it had decided to cancel the paid inclusion program by the end of this year. All the partners were informed of the decision and the news was released to the media in a panel discussion at the iProspect/Range Online Media Client Summit which was moderated by the Editor-in-Chief of Search Engine Land, Danny Sullivan.

There had always been a lot of controversy surrounding the paid inclusion program of Yahoo. Ask.com CEO Jim Lanzone once commented that it is quite unethical to ask money for something that is ideally a free, unbiased, organic search index.

Any user who tries to access Yahoo’s paid inclusion sales page will be directed to the advertising yahoo.com. Yahoo has decided that the annual fee that it charges per URL for the ‘Search Submit Basic’ program as well as the cost-per-click program of the ‘Search Submit Pro’ will be waived completely after December 31st of this year.

In a statement that was released to Search Engine Land, Yahoo reported that they intend to divert their resources and efforts to developing the core areas of their focus like improvement of the search quality and relevancy of advertisements to increase and improve user engagement and ROI for advertisers; hence the company has made the decision to quit the paid inclusion program. Yahoo recently rolled out search retargeting as an innovative step in Search Marketing.

The website has also added enhancements to Consumer Search like the latest search results page and Rich Ads in Search. Yahoo! decided to roll out this decision earlier on to give enough time to all the advertisers who will be affected by the site’s decision. The website has decided to work in close quarters with Search Summit advertisers and has also announced many new features and enhancements to improve the overall search quality experience.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Let me introduce you to five search tools on the Twitter webpage which may have gone unnoticed till now. These are useful and definitely worth a try.

The first one which has great local search implications is Schmap: Trending Restaurants and Bars search tool which can give you information and tweets about restaurants and bars in thirteen different cities across the world. You can also browse by the category of food and also by geographical location like district or neighborhood. This is definitely an interesting search option for all the food connoisseurs out there.

Areaface is the second interesting search tool on Twitter which allows you to search for other Twitter users in a specific town or city. You can click anywhere on the map provided to read recent tweets from that particular location. What makes this tool highly interesting and unique is that you can also narrow down the results by keyword enabling you to connect with other users who have similar interests.

TwitterJobSearch.com is the third tool through which you can search for thousands of jobs that are advertised on the site. There are several filters in place like job category, location, salary etc. which can be put to good use in these recession times.

Searchtastic is yet another search tool on Twitter which is quite new and allows users to search deep into the archives of the website. Only one thing though, the tool is limited by Twitter API and hence all the tweets cannot be indexed.

Yet another of the search tools is TweepSearch which is quite similar to Areaface but does not connect to like-minded Twitters through tweets but instead searches the bios of these users thus providing better results.

These lesser known search tools of Twitter are actually quite interesting and exciting for the avid Twitter.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Yahoo search ads tool is undergoing a major change with many new features getting incorporated. According to the blog on Yahoo Search, the latest features include a desktop management tool, network distribution control, integrated rich ads and much more. Let us take a detailed look at these innovative add-ons to the Search ads.

The first interesting feature is the Yahoo Search Marketing Desktop Tool which is created more along the lines of Google’s desktop tool and is intended to manage AdWords. The specialty of this feature will be that advertisers can now manage their search campaigns both offline and online. This feature has been a long-awaited one and advertisers are eagerly looking forward to using this to their advantage.

Integrated Rich Ads management is another feature that will get incorporated into the Search tool later this month. Once this is done, advertisers can directly use the YSM console and manage rich search ads.

Another interesting and exciting feature that will be launched soon is the Yahoo BOSS platform which will allow third-party developers to not only syndicate Yahoo search on their websites but also generate revenue using BOSS.

The fourth addition to the tool is the Network Distribution bidding control using which advertisers can run ads on both Yahoo and its partner networks. It will also allow advertisers to separately set bids for every channel or distribution.

A spokesperson at Yahoo said that the company has decided to constantly and continually improve its search ad technology by either improving the existing or by adding enhancements to the ad selection technology. Yahoo also intends to use previous queries to fine tune and refine their ads which will be displayed to the searchers and other users. Well, this promise definitely sounds exciting and will eagerly be awaited by all advertisers.

Popularity: 2% [?]

The latest from Yahoo is its revamped search format which recently went live. Though the change is not radical or earth-moving, users can notice some new upgrades and improvements to the features. The most prominent feature is a new left column by which users can now filter results making use of Search Monkey content providers or refine the results by related concepts. The Search Assist tool has undergone an expansion and there is also a prominent placement for Search Pad on the site. Yahoo also claims that the new search format offers improved image and video search along with improved speed and performance.

These new features and changes of Yahoo Search are currently in effect in the US, UK, France, Spain, Mexico and India and will soon be available in other centers too. One must agree that the new format is more visually appealing than the earlier one and the Search Monkey refinements are definitely more useful for the users.

Many feel that the new look and feel of Yahoo Search is along the lines of Bing which is thought to be a potential business threat to Yahoo than to Google Search. Once the Microsoft-Yahoo deal comes through after the regulatory issues are handled, the actual results on both Bing and Yahoo will be the same. If this happens, Yahoo will need to constantly make changes and upgrade its Search interface to appease users or it could lead to loss of usage and fall in its market shares.

I do agree along with most users that the Search Monkey feature is the most useful and prominent among all the new changes but they could make it more personalized by allowing users to select their favorite filter. Though we were all led to believe that Yahoo had given up on its search engine, the new upgrades are surprising and pleasant to its faithful users.

Popularity: 2% [?]

The recent Microsoft-Yahoo search deal seems to be going through a rough patch as it faces many regulatory hurdles. This leaves one wondering if Yahoo has a Plan B in sight especially after its CEO, Carol Bartz, told in a New York Times interview that the company is not in a position to run Search on its own. This statement is in complete contrast to the earlier one that came out in June before the announcement of the deal; Bartz said that Yahoo has nothing whatsoever to do with Microsoft.

But in the later interview, she mentioned that Yahoo has decided to sell Search as it cannot match Microsoft and Google in this business due to the level of investment. This statement can cause serious damage to the deal as no buyer will be interested in paying a high price if they think that the seller is desperate or has no alternative. Meanwhile a lot of high-ranking employees are quitting Yahoo, the most recent one being Doug Cutting who left last month. I believe that these people were just smart enough to foresee that Yahoo was done as a search engine.

In a recent television interview, Bartz once again pushed the fact that user interface changes will enable Yahoo to once again be a competing search tool which according to me is a complete hogwash. She also underplayed the role of Search saying people these days hardly spend any time using this tool. Yahoo might be a leader in many other areas but it can never match Google which recently made its search box bigger; though simple, this was a highly effective move which has only fetched the site more and more users.

Bartz has been seriously trying to marginalize the importance of the search tool; no matter how hard she tries the fact remains that search engines are the most popular internet activity after email. If the Yahoo-Microsoft search deal does not come through, the company will have do some serious thinking on how to revive its search tool.

Popularity: 2% [?]