It was amongst others Jason Calacanis who a couple of years ago started the discussion on the pollution of search results. He claimed that most results in Google were spam. In a presentation he held in Paris he showed several malicious Google results. One of the reasons he pointed this out was his then new searchengine Mahalo which because it was all done by people, wouldn't have any spam results.

Since that time Google has improved a lot when it comes to spam and malicious results in the SERPS. It now seems as if Twitter will be facing that challenge. More and more spammers are using Twitter to get their message across. Still, search engines also struggle with it. The Russian search engine Yandex launched a report on dangerous results last week. I the last four months their database of malicious sites has grown with 2,5 million new sites.

Yandex looked at the searches which are marked as "potentially dangerous results". The report shows that Yandex shows this message no less than 4,5 million times a day (!).... read more

Here's the difference between Google and Bing: Google very proudly announced the site snippets last week. Almost immediately blogposts around the world were written on the subject off course on Twitter there were many tweets on the subject.

At the Bing-offices they must have looked at it with somewhat of a strange feeling. It after all is a feature which also exists on Bing. Their feature however got a lot less attention. They  'only' had a blogpost on it on their search blog. Not many responded.... read more

We knew it was coming for a while, some spotted the links in the snippet texts already, but just before the weekend Google 'officially' launched the renewed site snippets. In these snippets you can now put links to parts of the page which cover the different part of the search. It's anchor texts put into the snippets.

Google explains on their blog the what and why of the links in the snippets. Wikipedia is the best example to explain the use of the snippets. That's because Wikipedia has got very long pages with content divided in different parts of the page. Before you had to scroll down to the specific part of the page, but now you can click on the link in the snippet and you will be directed straight to the part you want.... read more

It's one of those rare moments, which one day I hope to have myself, being able to sit down with the big man at one of the biggest companies in the world. Michael Arrington got to sit down with Steve Ballmer this week. A full hour of talking.

He talked about numerous subjects, from products and strategies to Bing and cloud computing, it was all addressed. Off course we were most interested in the Bing part. Ballmer on that topic said a couple of interesting things.... read more

Avinash Kaushik, amongst other things a Google Analytics evangelist,  will release his newest book on the analytics topic in October. In the book he will describe that you need different ways of measuring. Not only site analytics are important, so are social media stats. The number of Twitter followers, the niche you might be in and retweets for example are all points of measurement.

Being a Google evangelist Avinash might look at Microsoft with a suspicious eye. But the new tool Microsoft announces at Advertising Week 2009 this week must be something he will look at with interest as a analytics-guru. The "proof-of-concept prototype business tool, code-named LookingGlass,” is something in the lines of what he believes people should look at. The new tool analyzes social media and "helps companies to listen and participate".... read more