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Alexa launches new and improved web search application

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Alexa Web SearchHere’s something new from Alexa: a developer-friendly version of its service that returns up to 1 million results with just a single query, provides results to complex queries involving thousands of search terms, and gives programmers access to the actual page content of the matching documents. Alexa Web Search is a fully owned subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc.

With this latest Alexa update, developers can now tweak through the Alexa Web Search technology and use their application to create vertical search engines for specific categories. Developers can also create custom web search to start off, for example, a directory of “Paris Hotels”. By getting up to a million matching data for the keyword “Paris” and “hotel”, developers can then process these documents using Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), store the results in their Simple Storage Service (S3), and from these come up with a web search that cater to a specific niche.

“The Alexa Web Search Platform that we released in beta two years ago was the beginning of what we are launching today. We learned that developers want even deeper access to the crawl. They want a toolbox, not a Swiss Army knife, and APIs, not GUIs,” said O’Driscoll. “We listened to our developers and the new Alexa Web Search service is the result.”

Originally posted on June 7, 2007 @ 6:08 am

EatonWeb, a blog directory that matters

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EatonWeb Blog DirectoryFinally, a blog directory that provides valuable information to blog owners and blog advertisers, and not simply a directory submission site that just passes link juice and collects submission fees.

With hundreds of sophisticated link farms that post up as directory submission sites, Ryan Carldwell and his team developed a blog directory “that matters”, in its pursuit to help bloggers, advertisers, and SEOs to acquire not only valuable links but quality blogs and content too.

EatonWeb organizes blog categories by strength and momentum, allowing blog owners to monitor their blog’s progress and to set concrete goals. More so, it also provides detailed information for blog advertisers and buyers that allows them to evaluate the quality and value of a blog.

By continuously improving its measurements, features, and services, the developers of EatonWeb aspires to be among the most valuable blog directories in the net, following the likes of Best of the Web, Blog Flux and Blog Catalog. It comes with a neat and user-friendly interface too, making your blog search and monitoring more pleasureable. Best of all, submissions are free. So head over EatonWeb and submit your blogs today.

Originally posted on June 6, 2007 @ 11:59 pm

McAfee study reveals dangers of search engine use

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McAfee State of Search Engine SafetyMcAfee, among the leading Internet security companies, releases its latest study — the second installment to the State of Search Engine Safety which reveals that search engine use is, ultimately, still risky.

While there is about 1% decline to the dangers of using search engines, web searchers are still predominantly exposed to various threats brought about by sites that are associated with spams, viruses and trojans, and unsecured downloads. Interestingly, risky sites that are referred to by paid listings are 2.4 times as many as those referred by organic search, with categories related to music and technology as being the most dangerous search key terms.

Among the five major search engines, AOL proves to be the safest with only 2.9% of its search results tagged as risky. This is closely followed by Google at 3.4% and Ask.com at 3.5%. Apparently, Yahoo search is riskiest, having about 5.4% of its search results fail the test.

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Originally posted on June 6, 2007 @ 12:56 pm

E-commerce sites dominate paid search marketing

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E-commerce sites are the most frequent benefactors of paid search marketing, according to a study made by ComScore, leader in providing statistics-based research of the digital world. This study based on the March 2007 qSearch Marketer report shows that the top 10 paid search marketers are either online retailers or comparison shopping sites.

About 20 billion sponsored link exposures were generated in March from the top search engines, the top 16% of which are e-commerce sites. Leading the list was eBay.com with 802 million sponsored link exposures (4.1%) followed by Smarter.com with 366 million (1.9%), and Shopping.com with 357 million (1.8%).

Comscore Study on Paid Search Marketing

“It’s clear that retail e-commerce sites are the most aggressive in using sponsored search to drive traffic to their sites,” James Lamberti, senior VP of comScore Search Solutions, said. “The top ten sites generating sponsored links — all of which are retail or comparison shopping sites — account for about one out of every six sponsored links served to U.S. Internet users. Given that retail e-commerce is now a $100 billion a year industry, it’s not surprising that top online retailers are willing to bid for premium placement at the major search engines.”

Based on the same study, Google accounted for 57.3% of the total referral activities (or click-thru rate), 53.8% of which were directed to, you got it, e-commerce sites.

Originally posted on June 6, 2007 @ 4:53 am

IceBreaker gets $7.2M to fund mobile dating network

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IceBreaker's Crush and FlushIceBreaker secured $7.2 million in funding to continue marketing its mobile dating service, Crush or Flush. With the amount raised, this 2-year old Bellevue start-up plans to establish a research and development center in Beijing where the company currently employs 20 people.

Launched sometime in January, Crush or Flush is a mobile social network that allows singles to find potential partners by browsing other members’ picture profiles on their cell phone or computer where they can either pursue someone (crush) or not (flush). Here they can chat, flirt, and meet people with similar interests anonymously, without having to disclose personal information such as cell phone number or email address.

To date, Crush or Flush has over 150,000 registered mobile users since it was launched four months ago. “With an average of 20 minutes per session, ‘Crush or Flush’ drives data usage and revenue for our partners, and builds a stable, fast-growing community for members,” said IceBreaker CEO Michael Robinson.

Originally posted on June 6, 2007 @ 2:23 am