Google, Yahoo, eBay & Linking : Today’s Search Engine News
Doing some traveling today down to Tampa Bay, so posts on Search Engine Journal will be sparse. Here are some summaries of some Search News on the blogs and news pages today.
Google Accessible Web Search :
Accessible Search is an early Google Labs product designed to identify and prioritize search results that are more easily usable by blind and visually impaired users. Regular Google search helps you find a set of documents that is most relevant to your tasks. Accessible Search goes one step further by helping you find the most accessible pages in that result set.
In its current version, Google Accessible Search looks at a number of signals by examining the HTML markup found on a web page. It tends to favor pages that degrade gracefully — pages with few visual distractions and pages that are likely to render well with images turned off. Google Accessible Search is built on Google Co-op’s technology, which improves search results based on specialized interests.
Accessible Search is a natural and important extension of Google’s overall mission to better organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible. Google Accessible Search is designed to help the visually challenged find the most relevant, useful and comprehensive information, as quickly as possible.
Motorola to Feature Yahoo Go Services on Phones:
The new multi-year deal calls for new mid-priced and high-end Motorola phones to run an integrated set of services known as Yahoo Go for Mobile ( http://go.yahoo.com/mobile ) that includes Yahoo e-mail, search and address book in a single place.
“We are looking at a broad range of phones,” Bruce Stewart, vice president of business development for Yahoo’s Connected Life’s business unit, said in a phone interview.
eBay Refocuses on Core Auction Business : eBay looks to be de-incentivizing their store listings to focus eBay.com back on auctions.
* Store Inventory listings now comprise about 83% of active eBay.com listings on average.
* While eBay.com core listings typically sell in about two weeks, Store Inventory listings on average take 14 times longer to sell. In some media categories, Store Inventory listings take more than 40 times longer to sell than core listings.
* And, when you compare our operations costs for an average Store Inventory listing and an average core listing – factoring in the duration of each – our cost to host a Store Inventory listing is more than 50% higher than for a core listing. In fact, current Store Inventory insertion fees don’t cover eBay’s costs for hosting them.
Will the Government Link to Your Site? Bill Slawski looks at reasons why the government may link to your web site:
Why would a government site link to yours?
Here are three reasons:
1. Your site is a related government site.
2. Your site is a service provider related to the government site in some manner.
3. Your site provides quality information which fills an informational gap that the government site doesn’t.Service providers
The person who asked about a government link to his site was a service provider, certified by the State he was from to provide a service mandated by the State.
Government agencies are often hesitant to provide references to service providers, especially when there is more than one that may offer a service. There are exceptions, but those really need to be explored with the agencies themselves.
