Internet Search Directory

Google has taken its Postini investment and turned out Google Web Security for the Enterprise, which is supposed to protect against spyware, viruses and zero-hour threats in real-time whether the user is on the corporate network or working remotely like at a hotel or in an airport. If it detects malware it's supposed to neutralize it before it can reach the company network.

From Application Virtualization to Xen, a round-up of the virtualization themes & topics being discussed in NYC June 23-24, 2008 by the world-class speaker faculty at the 3rd International Virtualization Conference & Expo being held by SYS-CON Events in The Roosevelt Hotel, in midtown Manhattan.

Zoho announced that it is welcoming Google and Yahoo users with a unified login designed to encourage those users to try Zoho applications. Now, Google and Yahoo users who visit Zoho can simply log into Zoho using the usernames and passwords associated with their Google and Yahoo accounts.

'Wikipedia is a great way for us to showcase Powerset's functionality while giving people a faster time to satisfaction,' said Barney Pell, co-founder and CTO of Powerset, as his company today unveiled a publicly available beta product that according to Pell reinvents how users search and discover information from Wikipedia.

Microsoft, which spent $6 billion on aQuantive and was chasing Yahoo for its ads before it came to a dead stop, has been supporting - as in helping write - legislation in New York and Connecticut that would regulate the data that companies like Yahoo and Google collect for targeted advertising. The New York bill, which Google, Yahoo, AOL and Facebook oppose, would let consumers opt-out of tracking.

So how does it feel to have witnessed one of technology's little miracles this week? I mean Yahoo's stock price successfully defying gravity. It's as close as any of us will ever get to an apparition of the Virgin Mary floating on a cloud without any visible means of support. Apparently Wall Street isn't convinced that Microsoft has indeed pushed on despite leaks that it has reached out instead to Facebook, another company with an inflated view of itself.

Yahoo's stock dropped roughly 19%-20% this morning at the open, shaving $8.7 billion off its value, its first installment on the price of its independence from Microsoft. Yahoo, whose position improved a couple of percentage points in the first half-hour of trading, is being held up by investor confidence that Microsoft will be back after the stock sinks, a widely held view, or alternatively that Yahoo will align with Google. At around 10 o'clock it was around $23.70.

Yahoo! founders Jerry Yang and David Filo received stupid advice from their investment bank advisers and blew their chance to close the deal with Microsoft as of this Sunday morning. Neither Yang nor Filo are experts on how to sell a company in a multi-billion dollar deal. They have relied on their investment bankers and advisers since the negotiations started with Microsoft. The difference between the offered price of $33 and the asking price of $40 per share is roughly $1.4b per share, so it's not small potatoes.

The Ubuntu Linux-based gOS operating system from Good OS LLC (www.thinkgos.com) includes so many Google applications like Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google News Google Maps and YouTube that it's often referred to as the Google operating system. It also includes Firefox, Skype, Facebook and OpenOffice 2.3.

Surf Canyon Calif. offers search technology that learns

An Oakland, Calif. start-up is launching new search technology that lets you easily narrow Web queries and learns about your preferences based on what results you choose to view. Surf Canyon offers up a list of Web results to queries and if you hover over a particular link or click on a target icon next to a link, more results that are related to that particular page are displayed underneath it. Surf Canyon is not a search engine . Rather, it is a "queryless discovery engine," says Mark Cramer, chief executive of the company.

Sprint Nextel Corp to upgrade Microsoft mobile search services

U.S. wireless carrier Sprint Nextel Corp (S.N) said on Monday it would offer a new Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) Web and local business search application on its phones using a technology that pinpoints a caller's location. Starting on Tuesday, the number-three U.S. wireless company will also offer customers a download of a new voice-recognition search product from Microsoft to allow users to find local businesses by simply speaking into a handset. Sprint's upgraded offerings from Microsoft's Windows Live represent the next stage of their partnership to cash in on advertising from a budding mobile Internet search market.

Is a robots.txt file required for SEO?

A Search Engine Watch Forums thread has a simple question. Is a robots.txt file required for SEO? The answer is no, a robots.txt file is not required. If you want the search engines to crawl your site, you do not have to do anything. If you do not want them to crawl your site, you can tell them not to with a robots.txt file. That is not to say the robots.txt file isn't useful. You can use it to control which pages the search engines should not crawl, which can be very useful for duplicate content and SEO purposes. In addition, most search engines have added layers of features that you can control via the robots.txt file. So if you want to institute a crawl-delay for Yahoo, you can. If you want to specify a sitemaps location, you can. If you want to try to catch rogue spider, the file can be helpful.

American Airlines sues Google over search words involving its name

American Airlines, the world's largest airline, said on Friday it sued Internet search leader Google Inc for selling search words involving its name. The claim is the latest in a string of cases filed worldwide by businesses that argue Google's pay-per-click advertising system, its main source of revenue, is used unfairly by competitors to grab business. The Web search company has prevailed in at least two similar U.S. cases, including a lawsuit brought by auto insurer GEICO, but still faces trial later this year in California by American Blinds and Wallpaper as well as overseas claims.

Google expands Code Search

Google has updated its Google Code Search site for finding publicly available source code, adding greater coverage and improvements in ranking and access.Launched in October 2006, Google Code Search enables developers to locate source code on the Web, searching through billions of lines of code. "Today we made some updates to Code Search that will hopefully make it even easier to find the code you're looking for," said Google software engineer Aleksander Fedorynski in a blog entry Thursday about the improvements. To improve ranking, Google has amended Code Search so class and method definitions now appear closer to the top of search results for certain queries.

Google cuts personal search data time

Google has responded to European search data commissioners' concerns about its data retention policy by reducing the length of time it holds personally identifiable search data. The search giant keeps information from each search made using its engine, including the search terms, the IP address the search came from, and details such as the web browser used. Its policy is now to make this data anonymous after 18 months rather than the 18 to 24 month term it previously held to.

Yahoo Search And Display Ad Sales

NEW YORK Yahoo is combining its search and display advertising sales teams in the U.S. and appointed David Karnstedt to oversee the new unit. Karnstedt is currently senior vice president of search sales business. "Integrating our world-class search and display teams under David's leadership will allow us to better serve all of our advertisers' marketing objectives ranging from brand awareness to direct response," Sue Decker, president of Yahoo, said in a statement. Karnstedt joined Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture) in September 2001. Prior to his position with the company, he worked for Wired Digital, Lycos and Alta Vista.

Mobile search

Whether you're searching for text, video, images, news, or local information, you have lots of options beyond Google. We tried dozens of search engines and found some worthy challengers to the king. Using search on a mobile phone or other handheld device is a unique and sometimes frustrating experience. Odds are you're traveling and you want quick, local information, like directions to a nearby restaurant or gas station, the phone number of a long-lost friend, or tickets to a baseball game. Depending on your ISP and your physical location, your mobile Internet connection may not be particularly fast or reliable. And obviously, the road is no place to be searching for videos.

All of the major search services help you retrieve local information on a mobile device. We found Microsoft Live Search for Mobile offered the most accurate local results, but only by a small margin over Google Maps, Yahoo Local, Ask City, and Whitepages.com. Live Search for Mobile worked particularly well at finding contact information for businesses and people. That said, you'll want to use at least two mobile search sites, as different engines excel in different areas. For instance, if you're searching for phone-book-style information, use Live Search for Mobile, Superpages.com, or WhitePages.com. To find an online ticket seller for baseball seats, go to Ask.com, Google, or Yahoo--but use their Web search rather than the local-search option.

Companies need better site search

Forrester Research says that half of Web surfers use site search first on unfamiliar sites rather than browsing. Thirteen percent of visitors go to another site if they can't find what they are looking for. Companies spend millions of dollars to attract visitors to their Web sites. However, top-name brands continue to make common mistakes in site search, according to Rebecca Thompson, vice president of marketing at Vivisimo.

More Google apps on their way

It won't be long after next month's iPhone launch that several new Google-based applications will begin making their way onto the first-ever Apple handsets via software updates, says an official for AT&T Wireless. There are other things, added Lurie, such as widgets and "some of the Google applications that are coming" that will serve to distance pricing concerns from the minds of consumers. Apple has said that the iPhone will ship with Google Search and Google Map Search but has not commented on plans for any additional applications from the search giant. Similarly, the company has not yet revealed the data plan options and pricing tiers that will be made available alongside iPhone.