Tag: Search Engines

Search Engines

China blocks Technorati

I received an email this morning from Ken Carroll of ChinesePod telling me that China has blocked Technorati at the great firewall – it would appear that Technorati will no longer be available to anyone to use in China.

Co-incidentally, when I interviewed Technorati’s CEO David Sifry on the PodLeaders show a couple of weeks back, Ken submitted the following question for David –

Do you have a China strategy? What do you foresee there in terms of blogging and blog search?

Does this mean Technorati isn’t censoring search results into China like Google, MSN, Yahoo are? And if this is the case, will Technorati now have to start doing the Chinese government’s censorship job for them if they wish to be seen in China once more?

I have posted about this topic in the past and, in my naive opinion, unless all the search engines come together to formulate a common China strategy, China will continue to pick them off one by one.

UPDATE:
I see the Mad About Shanghai blog is also reporting that Technorati is being blocked in China.

FURTHER UPDATE – it looks like a couple of sites are now reporting that Technorati is available once more in China – can anyone else confirm that?

Search Engines, Web 2.0

Technorati tag search broken?

I did a couple of tag searches on Technorati this afternoon – but they came up empty – I wasn’t so surprised with one or two of the more obscure ones I tried but when my search for the tag Google came up with the following message:

There are no posts with that tag yet. Please try again later or post one yourself! To contribute to this page, just post to your blog and include this code

I began to suspect there Technorati may be having some technical issues!

Technorati tags broken

Search Engines

Mobile phones mean privacy is an illusion

SFGate.com is running a story on how Google’s plan to give San Francisco free wi-fi will mean that Google will be able to track the location of anyone logged into its wi-fi network.

Privacy advocates are raising concerns about Google Inc.’s plans to cover San Francisco with free wireless Internet access, calling the company’s proposal to track users’ locations a potential gold mine of information for law enforcement and private litigators.

The Mountain View search engine intends to use the geographic data to match users with advertising so that they would see marketing messages from neighborhood businesses such as pizza parlors, cafes and book stores.

Aw, come on guys – sure this will allow Google to log your whereabouts – so what? Your mobile phone is already broadcasting your location to your mobile operator all the time it is switched on. The police can (and do) subpoena mobile operators for suspect’s location data.

Privacy has been an illusion for quite some time now.

UPDATE – I see AP have picked up this story now as well.

Search Engine Optimisation, Search Engines

Don't optimize article titles for search engines alone

There’s an article in today’s New York Times which claims that journalists are now writing their article headlines with search engines, not human readers, in mind!

The search-engine “bots” that crawl the Web are increasingly influential, delivering 30 percent or more of the traffic on some newspaper, magazine or television news Web sites. And traffic means readers and advertisers, at a time when the mainstream media is desperately trying to make a living on the Web.

This is sounds like a really bad idea in my humble opinion – sure you need to bear search engines in mind when writing articles and titles but don’t let them dictate your post titles to you completely. Why? Sure you need to be listed in search engine results – but you also need a human reader of the results to click on your link. If your title is a really boring title designed solely to attract search engines, no-one will click through to read the article and your search engine optimisation is in vain.

Search Engines, Technology

Google cannot be trusted with confidential information

Google inadvertently released some confidential information last week – the information was in the speaker notes of a PowerPoint file posted for the Google investors meeting. Greg Linden downloaded the PowerPoint file not realising fully what it contained but as soon as he started blogging about it, it was pulled from the Google site and a sanitised pdf version was posted in its place.

What did Google have in this PowerPoint file? Amongst other gems, according to Michael Arrington on TechCrunch, slide 19 contained the following:

Store 100% of User Data

With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including: emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc).

We already have efforts in this direction in terms of GDrive, GDS, Lighthouse, but all of them face bandwidth and storage constraints today. For example: Firefox team is working on server side stored state but they want to store only URLs rather than complete web pages for storage reasons. This theme will help us make the client less important (thin client, thick server model) which suits our strength vis-a-vis Microsoft and is also of great value to the user.

As we move toward the “Store 100%� reality, the online copy of your data will become your Golden Copy and your local-machine copy serves more like a cache. An important implication of this theme is that we can make your online copy more secure than it would be on your own machine.

Another important implication of this theme is that storing 100% of a user’s data makes each piece of data more valuable because it can be access across applications. For example: a user’s Orkut profile has more value when it’s accessible from Gmail (as addressbook), Lighthouse (as access list), etc.

Google aims to offer 100% storage for users?

Greg goes on to further point out that:

the notes to slide 14 contain revenue projections for next year, also something I didn’t notice previously. Because Google published these projections to their website, even briefly, they were forced to file a 8-K with the SEC

For those interested, Paul Kedrosky has posted a copy of the original PDF on Box.net.

Am I the only one who finds it ironic that Google’s highly secret plans to host all of our confidential information, were accidentally released on the Internet for all to see? Google can’t be trusted with their own private information – in those circumstances, how do they expect anyone would trust them with their personal data?

Search Engines

Google releases half-baked Google Pages

Google released a new product overnight called Google Pages and one has to wonder why?!

Google Pages gives you the ability to create simple web pages through a simple online web editor but it is missing so much as to be pre-pre-alpha (although, in Fairness to Google they do say it is a Beta (isn’t everything these days?).

It doesn’t run in Safari:
Google Pages on Safari

and in Firefox (on my Mac, at least) many of the icons don’t load – see the broken images on the top-left below:
Google Pages on Firefox/OS X

Other things missing are:

UPDATE:
I se ResourceShelf is reporting that the Google page site are not accepting any more registrants for the moment. Demand has exceeded their expectations once more seemingly (remember Google Analytics signup debacle anyone?) – attempted new logins now get the message:

Oops…Thank you for your interest in Google Page Creator! Google Page Creator has experienced extremely strong demand, and, as a result, we have temporarily limited the number of new signups as we increase capacity. In the meantime, please submit your email address and we will notify you as soon as we are ready to add new. Thank you for your patience.

Search Engines

Measure Maps swallowed whole by Google!

I see Google have bought Measure Map an online web stats application. Google already have Google Analytics as a Web Stats application so they must really like Measure Map’s technology to say they have bought it from Adaptive Path (the developers) and have taken the Measure Maps team with them.

A comment on Paul Kedrosky’s site by Simon Cast sums up the probable thinking behind this deal nicely:

This acquisition fits very neatly into the strategy of Google becoming an arbiter of attention. Its forays into radio and print are simply the company expanding into other areas of consumer attention. However, Google also needs to be able to measure attention on non-google sites which is where Google Analytics (nee Urchin) and now Measure Map come in.

These utilities will allow Google to gain attention information which can then be used to increase the price for advertising around certain topics and sites.

Michael Arrington has speculated that the price was in the region of $5-$10m.

Podcasting, Search Engines

Could podcasting get content through the Great Firewall of China?

I wrote a couple of pieces last week about Google’s Internet censorship in China and the debate continues this week.

The four largest American companies who are actively helping the Chinese government censor the Internet are Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Cisco Systems. These four companies have been invited to a U.S. congressional subcommittee hearing on February 15 on the subject of U.S. Internet firms operating procedures in China.

The ‘fab four’ failed to turn up for a hearing this Wednesday are were roundly berated by Tom Lantos, D.-Calif., one of the caucus leaders:

Companies that have blossomed in this country and make billions, a country that reveres freedom of speech, have chosen to ignore that core value in expanding their reach overseas, and to erect a ‘Great Firewall’ to suit Beijing’s purposes,” he said. “These massively successful high-tech companies, which couldn’t bring themselves to send their representatives to this meeting today, should be ashamed. With all their power and influence, wealth and high visibility, they neglected to commit to the kind of positive action that human rights activists in China take every day. They caved in to Beijing’s demands for the sake of profits, or whatever else they choose to call it.

It is thought they will attend the Feb 15th hearing!

I note see now that the BBC are reporting that MSN is considering changing its censorship policies:

Brad Smith, Microsoft’s senior lawyer, said it would now remove blog entries only if it gets a “legally binding notice” from the government of that nation…. He added that only people in the nation where the entry breaks local laws will be blocked from seeing the controversial comments. In all other nations access to the entry will be unrestricted.

This is a marginal improvement over MSN’s existing policy of deleting accounts of people who wrote about ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, or ‘demonstration’ but it is still shoring up the ‘great firewall‘ of China.

Interestingly, Reuters is reporting that Bill Gates has come out against censorship today:

The spread of private e-mail means online users could distribute banned news despite government injunctions, he told a news conference.

“You may be able to take a very visible Web site and say that something shouldn’t be there, but if there’s a desire by the population to know something, it’s going to get out,” he said.

However, Gates said Microsoft, the world’s biggest computer software company, had to meet legal requirements of the countries where it does business.

I have spoken to several representatives of search engines recently and they have all told me that search engines are not indexing the audio content of podcasts and don’t have technologies to do so right now.

I wonder, if podcasts are more difficult to index, is there a role for podcasts to get content through the Great Firewall?

Search Engines

Google Adsense and EFT payments

This has probably been going on for a long time but I missed the memo(!) – Google’s Adsense is now paying by EFT as well as by cheque – this should speed up payments and reduce bank charges – excellent!

To access this facility:

  1. Click on the “My Account” tab in your Google Adsense screen
  2. Click on the “Edit” link beside Payment Details
  3. Select Add a new bank Account and click Continue
  4. Add in your bank account details and Save.

To verify the account Google will add in an amount to your account. You need to return to the Payment Details and enter the amount lodged in your account to verify it is your account.
This facility is currently available to people with bank accounts in the following countries:
Austria
Belgium
Canada
Denmark
France
Germany
Great Britain
Ireland
Italy
Japan
Netherlands
Portugal
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
United States

Search Engines

Google censors the Internet

The New York Times published an article yesterday (and I think I heard a reference this morning on Morning Ireland) about Google’s new Google.cn site.

According to the article, the new Chinese version of the Google search engine:

will not allow users to create personal links with Google e-mail or blog sites, will comply with Chinese law and censor information deemed inappropriate or illegal by the Chinese authorities

One of the reasons Google is hobbling its own technology in China is that Google.com is losing ground in the search market in China to Baidu.com – a Chinese search engine due to government censorship on some of Google.com’s content. A pre-censored Google.cn should have no such issues.

Google will argue that it is not putting profit before human rights – it is merely complying with the law of the land it wants to make profits in (they might not use that terminology exactly!) – the same as all the other major tech suppliers working in China (Cisco, Yahoo!, MSN, etc.). However, if these companies worked together, they could flout the repressive laws in China and theree would be little the Chinese Government could do against such a united front from their most important IT suppliers.

The price of doing business in China? You have to be prepared to sell your soul.

UPDATE:
I see John Battelle and Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineWatch have pieces on this as well.

Google’s motto of “Do no Evil” should now be changed to “Do no Evil (unless it interferes with the bottom line)”, I guess!