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| Viacom
Targets Google and YouTube |
Viacom
Sues Google, YouTube
Since negotiations fell apart between YouTube and Viacom, analysts have been speculating
about whether or not the media conglomerate would take legal action against the
popular video-sharing site. Specifically in light of the fact that Viacom video
clips continue to appear in YouTube's library on a regular basis.
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Reading
Was
YouTube Search Bad By Design?
We considered the effectiveness of YouTube's video search, and how it might be
fixed. Now that Viacom
has sued Google and demanded damages of upwards of $1 billion for copyright
infringement, we have to wonder if YouTube's native search was impaired, rather
than ineffective.
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Reading |
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Tuesday, March 13, 2007 |
After paying $1 million to purchase the rights to the Topix.com domain, Topix.net CEO Rich Skrenta now has to deal with a couple of daily realities in the search world: changing domains could cause a dropoff in search engine-driven traffic, and Google isn't exactly Nordstrom or L.L. Bean when it comes to customer service.
Editor's Note: You can now comment on articles featured on WebProNews.
Let us know what you think
about Topix.net's Google issue.
Several top level domains have come along in recent years to complement the .com, .net, and .org that have been available to the public. Dot com started life as the domain for commercial organizations, and over the years has become the must-have domain for one's business name.
Topix has been Topix.net for quite some time. Skrenta wants the dot com credibility, not to mention making it easier for people to find the news aggregator site. When it comes to the Web, people tend to think in terms of dot com.
Skrenta told the Wall Street Journal about the concerns he has with the change. Sites that make name changes without accounting for the ways search engines look for them could make a website invisible to searchers.
Redirection, particularly the issues with using 302 redirects, has been an issue of contention between webmasters and Google in particular. As the dominant search engine, Google can determine a website's success. Skrenta fears what a mishap with redirecting people from Topix.net to Topix.com could do for the site:
Even if traffic to Topix, which gets about 10 million visitors a month, dropped just 10%, that would essentially be a 10% loss in ad revenue, Mr. Skrenta says. "Because of this little mechanical issue, it could be a catastrophe for us," he says.
Skrenta also experienced the palpable frustration shared by many site publishers when dealing with Google:
Further frustrating him is that Google's response to Topix's plea for help was an email recommending that, if the switchover were to go badly, the company should post a message on an online user-support forum; a Google engineer might come along to help out. "This can't be the process," Mr. Skrenta says. "You're cast into this amusing, Kafkaesque world to run your business."
Amusing, maybe, but no one at Topix will be laughing if Topix vanishes from the Google realm. In the same article, Google's Matt Cutts said the post-and-wait support strategy 'is more reliable than it sounds.'
Fortunately, the issue of pleasing the search engines with a redirect can be addressed. Search engines like 301 redirects, which unlike the 302 redirect tells the search engine crawler that the redirect is permanent.
WebProNews Blog Talk contributor Eric Enge discussed 301 redirects in a recent article. In Google, a site Enge moved managed to be recognized properly within two to three weeks.
Skrenta probably will choke on a Pop Tart at the prospect of two to three weeks of uneven traffic. But we see no reason to think Matt isn't giving Topix good advice, so perhaps Skrenta should just drop in on the relevant Google Group and send out the SOS.
About
the Author:
David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.
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March
Madness Online: 5 Top Spots
By Dave Utter
Staff Writer | WebProNews
The sports wasteland of February has been brushed away as the NCAA men's basketball
tournament gets under way. Here are some sites that will have you setting up a
bracket and getting back to work without costing your employer $75 billion in
productivity losses.
CNBC sports business reporter and Gatorade
blogger Darren Rovell says
March Madness is big business, worth at least $3 billion as various pools begin
at offices around the country. There's another cost according to consultancy firm
Challenger, Gray & Christmas: at least $1.2 billion in lost productivity,
with $260 million of that coming in the opening Thursday and Friday days of the
tournament. We would like to help everyone get back to work as quickly as possible.
To help you out, here is a list of places to play or run your brackets from the
convenience of your work cubicle. All of them require free site registration to
participate and must have entries before tipoff of the first game on Thursday,
March 15.
1. ESPN
Many people think of the Worldwide Leader in Sports when they think about the tournament. ESPN's Tourney Challenge dangles $10,000 in front of the top winner of its contest.
ESPN's drag and drop brackets, and team analysis that pops up when doing a mouseover of a school, make it a visually appealing application. Up to five entries can be submitted.
About
the Author:
David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. |
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Google
Blocking Traffic to Competitors' Sites?
I was contracted to do SEO for iMapia.com Summary It seems that Google doesn't
mind anything on their search engine unless it directly threatens any of their
core applications.
After considerable efforts at optimizing iMapia.com for several different keyword
phrases and aspects of the mobile mapping software, it seemed that it was time
to target the market for "driving directions and maps". Several on-page and off-page
SEO techniques were used and hand-submission to many directories was done.
At a certain point, one would think that a keyword phrase that receives 55,000
to 100,000+ searches per month according to overture, would deliver a fair amount
of traffic if you were placed at position #14/15 on page 2 of Google "above the
fold". Top 20 results are usually a good bet for traffic, with a large number
of searches per month as with this keyword phrase.
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Inc. 2549 Richmond Rd. Lexington KY, 40509
