Remember UTUbe.com, the Universal Tube and Rollform Corporation website that collapsed as millions of people looked for YouTube.com? Well, first UTube complained, thinking they would sue YouTube or Google, while at the same time trying to jack up the price to buy their domain name. Now, though, they’ve gone the black hat route, and are selling links through Searchfeed on fake search results that are designed to look similar to the popular video sharing site.
At the top of UTube.com, there is a prominent search box and links underneath for:
- Poker
- Ringtones
- People
- Games
- Xtreme Travel
- Schools
- Colleges
- Skiing/Snowboarding
- DVDs
- Car Stuff
- Dating
- Sports
- Get Tickets
- Concerts
- LimeWire
Some are popular keywords, others popular YouTube topics. If UTube is smart, they’ll replace some of those links with the names of popular YouTube videos when they go viral, like the next LonelyGirl15.
Is this bad? Well, yes, but no. This move officially moves UTube towards becoming part of a bad neighborhood of the internet, where sites get traffic based on their names and sell links to the highest bidding SEO company or porn site. However, it was basically inevitable; sound-alikes of top 10 internet sites don’t come along every day.
If UTube values their tube and rollform business, they should keep the links up for three months, then sell the website. If the links make a good amount of money (and with Searchfeed, that is no guarantee), they can make a killing on the sale, find a new domain name, and walk away from this mess. If they keep this up, in a few years Universal Tube will find more of their business from their lucky domain name, and less from the sale of used tube mills.
No one can run a reputable business with stuff like this. Google won’t keep them in the search engine, for one thing. They have to offload the website and move on with their lives, and make good money on the way out.
(via Threadwatch)
Philipp has screenshots showing how the site used to look, and what’s been added.
December 14th, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Search Optimization, Advertising, General |
no comments
Google has gone live with Patent Search, which lets you search through over 7 million U.S. patents. The search engine seems pretty robust, with a bunch of advanced search operators, including:
- inassignee: - Search only patents with this assignee (example: Google)
- ininventor: - Patents from this inventor (example: Edison)
- intitle: - By patent title
- patent: - By patent number (which allows you to see Patent Number 1 - AAXL AND OTHER ROADS, which helps locomotive engines gain traction while traveling uphill)
- uspclass: - By patent office classification
- intlpclass: - By international patent classification
You can also search by issue and/or filing date. The patents have been scanned in, with the scan using the same interface as Google Book Search, which means it has all the useful features of Adobe Reader with none of the bloat and crappy performance.
What I really love is the front page, which shows images from five random patents that change on reload. One question: What if this patent comes up randomly?
(via Boing Boing and The Google Blog)
December 14th, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Search, General |
one comment
The Yahoo Search Blog features a post about how they’ve opened the new Panama ad platform to new advertisers. I just found it funny that the image in the post (and apparently on the front page of the new ad platform) features a search results page swimming in adverstisements. Close to 70% of the page appears to be paid for, not leaving a lot for the user.
The search in the screenshot is for “cellular phones” but the actual search results page for that term is a little more manageable (although still only 20% of the page is actual search results). Didn’t Ask.com teach us that Less Ads = Increased Market Share? I never use Yahoo Search (except when forced to for one reason or the other), and I’ve never realized just how bad they are with the ads.
Google does a hell of a lot better with this, as does every other major competitor. It looks like Yahoo has taken the crown as the most ad-bloated search engine, and despite that, they can’t monetize their traffic well. No wonder searchers are leaving in droves.
December 14th, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Services, Ask, Yahoo, Microsoft, Advertising, General |
2 comments
Blogger Dean Hunt got an odd request from a commercial website, asking him to remove his blog from Google, since he was starting to outrank that site. Its possibly the oddest SEO strategy I’ve ever seen; rather than trying to get more links, or buy ads, this site just asked the competition to get out of the way, and seemed to think Google would help them out.
On Thursday morning I checked our google positions and your site is now above us for this term. I haev checked your blog and it has nothing to do with [edited], so I think it would be best all round if you remove your blog from google for this search term.
Please understand that we make our living from this, and you are just writing a blog that has nothing to do with [edited].
If you do not remove yourself from google for this search, then I will call them myself and have you removed.
Obviously, this is someone who knows next to nothing about SEO. Of course, the simplest thing would have been to pay Dean for a prominent ad at the top of the page that outranked him, something I’m sure many bloggers would agree to do. Threats? Not so effective.
What dissapoints me is that Dean did not reveal the search term he was threatened about, since it would have revealed the company involved. I wish he had, since this story has been linked all over the place, and would have guaranteed Dean the top spot in perpetuity, burying the guy who emailed him. Well, at least got a ton of backlinks. Poor guy, probably killed his business, but he doesn’t come off as a smart, successful type anyway.
(via Search Engine Journal)
December 14th, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Search Optimization, Blogs, Humor, Advertising, General |
5 comments
IBM and Yahoo have announced an enterprise search product designed to compete with Google’s Mini Search Appliance, with one huge distinction: IBM/Yahoo’s solution is completely free. IBM OmniFind Yahoo Edition, powered by IBM’s enterprise search with a Yahoo interface and Yahoo web search, can index up to 500,000 documents and more than 200 file types. The UI output can be customized and outputted in multiple formats for embedding withing corporate websites.
It looks like a very powerful product, and the price ($0) is far too tempting for many to ignore. I could see a lot of midrange internet companies powering their internal and external search with this, and it exposes a hole in Google’s product line. While the Google Mini does sell, a lot of companies would probably prefer to just handle the whole thing in software, controlling the hardware used by their servers.
How can Google compete with free? With free, of course! Hopefully, Google’s prepared for this eventuality, and has a Google Search Appliance Software Suite in development. Release a free Google enterprise software search product, and have it promote the Google Mini and Google Search Appliance. Let companies get tied to the Google software product, while letting them know that an even better experience awaits them if they upgrade to the hardware product.
I’m tempted to install the IBM/Yahoo product on my server. It sounds great. With no comparable Google product, Yahoo’s blown things wide open.
(via InfoWorld)
December 14th, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Search Appliance, Yahoo, Search, General |
no comments
Google has released version 3 of its Toolbar for Firefox, and this one comes with a lot of features IE users have been enjoying, as well as one pretty cool one of its own. The new Toolbar adds the cool custom buttons system, as well as providing access to bookmarks through Search History, the Send To feature that sends pages via email/SMS/blog, and lets you sign in to your Google account.
The new feature is an interesting one, tied into Google Docs & Spreadsheets. Now, if you have any file that you know Google D&S can read, you can just drag it into the browser window, and the Google service will open the file for you. This can also work when you click on a link to one of these files, or even when you double-click on a file in the filesystem. In essence, Google has made it possible to set a web-based program as the default for certain filetypes, making using D&S almost as natural as opening the same files in Word or Excel.
While I don’t use D&S, guaranteed there are plenty of users who do, and are going to love this feature, which basically divorces you from Microsoft Office’s programs entirely. I’m just hoping the same feature is being developed for the next version of the IE Toolbar.
(via the Google Blog and LifeHacker)
December 14th, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Toolbar, Tools, General |
no comments
