Monday, November 21, 2005

Search Engine Use Continues To Surge
by Wendy Davis, Monday, Nov 21, 2005 6:00 AM EST

"SEARCH ENGINE USE HAS CONTINUED to surge in the last year, according to a new report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project and comScore Networks.
Forty-one percent of 1,577 Internet users surveyed by Pew in September and October reported that they had visited a search engine the previous day. When Pew conducted a similar survey in June of 2004, just 30 percent of Web users said the same. In fact, the only Web activity more popular than searching was using e-mail; about 52 percent of U.S. Web users told Pew researchers they had sent or received e-mail on the day before being surveyed this fall. "

Whats' interesting is that...
"Heavy use of search engines correlated with broadband connections, according to the report. Seventy percent of survey respondents who had broadband at home and work reported that they used a search engine the day before the survey, compared to just 33 percent of those with dial-up connections."

And... "Search use also seems to correspond with affluence. On a typical day, 52 percent of Web users in households earning at least $75,000 used search engines, compared to just 29 percent of those with household incomes of less than $30,000. "
Search Engine Stats
Google Web Search had 75 million unique visitors last month, followed by Yahoo! Search (68 million), MSN Search (49.7 million), Ask Jeeves (43.7 million), and AOL Search (36.1 million), according to comScore.

Monday, November 14, 2005

Google Personalized Search Leaves Google Labs:
"Google Personalized Search went live, says Search Engine Watch. The new feature reorders search results based on a user's search history in order to make them more relevant. Users will also have the ability to search through their history, allowing them to revisit previously viewed pages and bookmark those pages in order to find them again easily. However, personalized search is not something that just happens organically; it's an option offered through a Google account, which users receive when they sign up for AdWords, Gmail and other services. Other enhancements made to the product include a more sophisticated remove-results feature that lets users block individual results, URLs, or even whole domain names from search results. In the future, Google plans to integrate personal search with Google News, which, by the way, is still in beta, for some reason. News searches will be accessible through user history (although Google only maintains news stories for up to 30 days after publication), and will also contribute to search results. This feature is expected "soon."

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Matt Cutts has confirmed that Hidden CSS text can get your banned.
"Google has the right to decide not to return that site in our search results, because we feel that hiding text that is not visible to users is deceptive. "

Lots of concerns over the current list of white hat uses of CSS hidden text, but it makes sense for Google to place content over design when only taking content into account.