And mind you, these are real-time search from all Twitter updates.

Microsoft came out first with the announcement and has already implemented the search via http://bing.com/twitter:

However, upon inspection, the Twitter search on Bing doesn’t seen to be working. Now, that’s an epic fail on launch date.

On the other hand, Google’s announcement of the Twitter search integration is just an announcement. No specific date when this will be implemented and how the integration will be done.

So, why would Twitter want to give the search data to Bing and Google when they can do it on their own (which they’ve been actually doing already):

• Computing Power – search requires a huge amount of computing power (just ask administrators of very large forums on how their internal search is choking the servers). Google and Microsoft already has that technology so it spares Twitter from spending more on servers.
• Search Discovery – Twitter is already mainstream but it looks like its growth has plateaued (stagnant) for the last 3 months (according to Compete). Getting more traffic from search engines could help boost its growth.
• Monetization – Twitter could be developing a much better API and selling it as a premium to 3rd parties like Google and Microsoft. The search engines, in turn, can monetize the search traffic. It’s a win-win deal.

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Hard-core topics include SEO Ranking Factors for 2009, Writing Killer PPC Ad Copy, Twisted Twitter Tactics, Video SEO and Extreme Local SEO Tactics.

For marketing and agency people, we also have topics such as See the Big and the Small Picture using Web Analytics, How to Measure Online Media Values, 20 Ways to Build Your Brand Online, and How to Run a Successful Internet Marketing Agency.

For webmasters and forum owners, we have topics on how to manage huge sites. Jedi Dancel will share the success story behind Tsikot.com.

Just like the previous two conferences, we will also have site clinics. The Macalua, RJ of Sulit.com.ph, Hans Koch and I will be in this panel giving delegates tons of tips and recommendations on how to improve and efficiently manage their sites.

If you want to register or learn more about the conference, please call Fiera de Manila at the following numbers: (02) 896.06.39, / 896.06.37 and 899.62.16 or email fiera@info.com.ph or semcon@imvsolutions.com. Venue is at the Hotel Intercontinental, Makati City.

Registration is Php9,500 for two days, inclusive of meals and conference kits but if you sign up before end of the month, we have a 10% discount (group discount is 4 + 1 free). For students, inquire about our academic discounts.

SemCon 2009 is brought to you by IMVSolutions, Fiera de Manila and YugaTech.

I’ll be giving away free tickets to this conference to several bloggers via a blog contest/giveaway. Watch out for that next week.

Follow us on Twitter: @SemConPH

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The motivation is obvious — combined search and advertising forces of both Yahoo! and Microsoft could pose a stronger competition/alternative to Google.

Based on recent comScore numbers, Google owns 65% of U.S. core search while the combined Yahoo! (19.6%) and Microsoft (8.4%) shares add up to 28%.

So, for the next 10 years, Bing will be the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo! sites.

Yahoo! is expecting to earn about $275 million annually from this exclusive deal. On the other hand, Bing will gain access to a much larger search market.

What does this mean to publishers like us? Well, expect that around 1/3 of your site’s search engine traffic will now be under the hands (read: algo) of Bing. So go check your analytics software and see if you’re getting a good chunk of Bing referrals lately. If you’re site isn’t getting any referrals, your traffic could significantly go down once Bing powers Yahoo!

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Microsoft have had many attempts at making search right and while Bing is fairly new, it’s noticeably better than its previous iterations. It loads fast and results are fairly relevant (although much fewer results compared to Google and Yahoo).

They will still be hard-pressed to cut a sizable amount of user searches but at least Bing doesn’t turn off people away like the Live search used to.

Better late than never.

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Connie took a screenshot from her browser of what turned out to be human error from some engineers over at Google:

The incident happened sometime between 6:30 a.m. PST and 7:25 a.m. as Google explains:

What happened? Very simply, human error. Google flags search results with the message “This site may harm your computer” if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously. We do this to protect our users against visiting sites that could harm their computers. We maintain a list of such sites through both manual and automated methods. We work with a non-profit called StopBadware.org to come up with criteria for maintaining this list, and to provide simple processes for webmasters to remove their site from the list.

We periodically update that list and released one such update to the site this morning. Unfortunately (and here’s the human error), the URL of ‘/’ was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and ‘/’ expands to all URLs. Fortunately, our on-call site reliability team found the problem quickly and reverted the file. Since we push these updates in a staggered and rolling fashion, the errors began appearing between 6:27 a.m. and 6:40 a.m. and began disappearing between 7:10 and 7:25 a.m., so the duration of the problem for any particular user was approximately 40 minutes.

A single character (the “/”) did all that trouble. One can only imagine if it were a single word/command or a line of code?

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Google did this before with Google Answers before they closed shop. Yahoo followed thru with a successful re-incarnation in Yahoo! Answers. AOL has Yedda.

What Mahalo intends to do is encourage more participation and better quality content by offering the ability for those who seek answers to give tips to the best response.

It’s not going to be a requirement to give tips but if you want faster and better results for you answers, a tip would easily help do that.

You can use your tip, called Mahalo Dollars, to tip others when posting a question OR you can withdraw them as cold, hard cash while Mahalo keeps 25% of the bounty.

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A search for “yugatech” in 2001 reveals my old website hosted on HyperMart.net. It was an “AnandTech” wannabe.

Back then, .com domains were still $35 a year but there were at least two services that gave out free domains in exchange for free banner ads (via an ad bar) like NameDemo.

My university-hosted page also shows up when searching for my name and it showed our project page on WireLess LAN. I was playing around with 2Mbps WiFi networks back in 1999.

Check out Google in 2001.

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Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. When we find a page with your keywords, we stay on that page and analyze the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency.

So far, search is fast and relevant. Nice addition with the topic tab for grouping relevance and multi-column so you don’t scroll much. Cuil boasts of over 121 Billion web pages indexed.

They look promising especially when two of the founders were former architect of Google’s large search index, TeraGoogle, that launched in early 2006.

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The goal of BOSS is simple: to foster innovation in the search industry. Developers, start-ups, and large Internet companies can use BOSS to build and launch web-scale search products that utilize the entire Yahoo! Search index.

BOSS gives you access to Yahoo!’s investments in crawling and indexing, ranking and relevancy algorithms, and powerful infrastructure.

This is like a turbo-charged Google Custom Search. BOSS will give developers the ability to submit queries/parameters thru a BOSS API to retrieve up to 50 web, image, news, or spelling results in XML or JSON format.

With BOSS, you can basically create your own localized Technorati Search or something similar in a jiffy.

Yahoo has some limited search API before at 5,000 queries per day. BOSS is now unlimited, with no restrictions on presentation and white-labeling (no attribution required). Yahoo is also promising revenue sharing on search monetization in the future. Now, that’s a deal-maker!

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In May 2006, Yahoo announced it’s project codenamed Panama which aimed to compete with Google AdWords. It was first rolled out in the US last December 2007 and the introduction to the Philippine market brings some minor feature additions.

• Geo-targeting to specific countries.
• Option to choose between Yahoo’s content network or search network.
• Introduction of Philippine-based partner Publishers. These are yet to be announced but I reckon it could be the bigger players (re: news and media sites).
• Lower minimum bid of $0.01 (it used to be $0.10). Google AdWords’ minimum bid is $0.05.

Note though that these feature are already staple for AdWords. The only benefit advertisers get is the dirt cheap minimum bid price. Theoretically, you can buy 5 times more traffic on Panama than on AdWords — an advantage that could convince many advertisers to switch.

Some of my more technical question were not clearly answered but here’s what I see is lacking or still in the works:

• Localized support. Yahoo reps admit that phone support will still come from Singapore, where their regional office is located. Anonuevo confirms plan to put up Philippine office but does not provide any tentative date.
• Denomination. Payments are still in US dollars. I was actually expecting that ad budgeting to be in Philippine peso. The erratic peso-dollar conversion rates could turn-off local advertisers.
• Certification. The team wasn’t familiar with Yahoo Search Marketing Ambassador (a certification equivalent to Google AdWords Professional, GAP).

Anonuevo’s presentation revealed some intriguing stats about usage of Yahoo services in the Philippines. One example is their claim that Yahoo dominates in local search — 83% uses Yahoo search, 54% Google and 7% MSN (there are overlaps of course but they didn’t indicate how much). There are other stats on instant messaging, email usage, etc. but I wasn’t able to write down everything from the PowerPoint presentation (will just update this post once I receive a copy of the PPT).

My focus was actually on the content network which will include local publishers. They said they have a list which will be released later on. With this development, I hope that the Yahoo Publishers Network (YPN) will follow suit and they’d allow bloggers to finally get into their ad network. It’s been more than 2 years since I first applied for it.

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I’ve been struggling with several crashed servers early this evening from what could have been a massive amount of traffic coming in from search engines looking for the 2007 PRC Nursing Exams Results.

Even blog tracking by PinoyTopBlogs caused my server to crash. I can only imagine the number of blogs being swarmed by nursing examinees looking for the results online. All that traffic combined being tracked by PTB killed mySQL and Apache instantly. I can’t even revive it because every time we do a hard reboot, the server is trashed again before I can connect and make some preventive measures. This is like getting Dugg, Slashdotted, Farked, StumbledUpon and hitting Reddit all at the same time.

Traffic is so huge even Inquirer.net had to revert to their lite version (and on several occasions, have actually crashed the site as well). That’s your 80,000 nursing graduates going online and poring over the passers list. Hopefully, it should subside by midnight.

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Yahoo also made its own series of acquisitions, though not as aggressively as Google — Right Media, Rivals.com, and just recently Tyroo Media.

Microsoft took the gamble by acquiring mobile advertising solution ScreenTonic SA and digital marketing and advertising solutions aQuantive. The $6 billion purchase of aQuantive is the biggest buy for the company ever. Yahoo’s $700 million buy of RightMedia and Google’s DoubleClick worth $3.1B pales in comparison.

Yahoo’s revenue report shows $1.698 billion for Q2 of this year while Google had $3.87 billion for the same quarter. Despite that, GOOG shares dropped by $41.59 (almost 8%!) right after the announcement primarily because investors and shareholders realized Google missed its revenue projections (the hype has its disadvantages). On the other hand, Microsoft declares $13.37 billion Q2 revenues with a whooping total of $51.12 billion for this year ending June 2007. No wonder Microsoft can afford that $1.15 three-year extended warranty for the recent XBox 360 recall. Bill Gates must be itching to get back the title of World’s Richest man.

In the search front, Ask.com is leading the way on search privacy by announcing AskEraser, a feature that allows complete privacy searching. Google earlier announced it’s shortening cookie privacy expiration to just 18 months, far shorter than their previous year 2038 (yes, 2038! that far in the future) settings. Interestingly, a recent survey sponsored by Hakia.com reveals that 62% don’t trust search engines with their private information. Ask.com is going in the right direction. MSN Live is said to be gaining market share, up to 13.2% from last year’s 10.1%. Shoemoney says it’s because Microsoft sold 40 million copies of Windows Vista earlier this year. Google maintains its lead at 62.7%, while Yahoo is down to 19.6% and Ask at 3.3%.

In other news, Danny Sullivan’s new social website Sphinn.com launched last week. Jason Calacanis’ human-edited search engine Mahalo is running a contest; winners get an Apple iPhone. ReadWriteWeb focuses on the quest for the semantic web and looks at Hakia and Powerset. Seth Godin’s Squidoo addresses the issue of lens spamming.

Lastly, you gotta listen to this very funny parody by Lauren Weinstein entitled I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major Googler. Just click on the play button below {full lyrics here}.

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1. Bebo
2. MySpace
3. World Cup
4. Metacafe
5. Radioblog
6. Wikipedia
7. Video
8. Rebelde
9. Mininova
10. Wiki

I was particularly surprised that Rebelde came in at #8. It had 236,164 searches in Yahoo for November alone.

Mexican soap opera Rebelde was the eighth most searched for term on Google over the last 12 months, a sign of the importance of the Spanish language on the net.

Rebelde ended its run on television in June but the actors in the soap opera have formed a popular band, called RBD, which keeps interest in the soap opera alive.

So, this is the reason why I’m getting thousands of hit from an old post about Rebelde.com back in December 2005. Those guys leaving ‘em comments were actually Mexicans looking for the Rebelde TV soap opera website.

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Two ways to enter.

Method #1: Access the MSN Search and Win Promotion website online at http://www.msnsearchandwin.com. Conduct a Web search on the word or phrase that is pre-populated or enter your own word or phrase in the MSN Search module provided on the promotion website. Click the “Search” button to begin the Web search process and to display the results.

Method #2: Conduct a Web Search using the MSN Search module available at http://search.msn.com or other channels of MSN.com. When the Web Results of your Web Search are displayed, click the “MSN Search and Win” link located in the “Sponsored Sites” box on the Web Results page presented to determine if you are a winner. If you receive a message stating, “You are an Instant Winner” you win the prize indicated, subject to prize claim and verification. See rule #3 on how to claim your prize. You may play as often as you wish. Microsoft assumes no responsibility for lost, late, misdirected, incomplete, illegible, postage due entries or mail or for any computer, online, telephone, or human error or technical malfunctions that may occur. Incomplete entries are void. The use of any automated launching or entry software or any other mechanical or electronic means that permits the participant to automatically enter or conduct searches repeatedly is prohibited.

Official rules here. Complete list of prizes here.

In this day and age, searching the net need not only be free, you also need to get paid for using it.

How about free internet?

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It’s basically a un-branded search which represents Google, MSN and Yahoo search engines. Using a keyword of your choice, you do a search for Brand X, Y, & Z.

You then select which of the search results is the most relevant and it will tell you which search engine it is. Try it for a couple of keywords to see which of the 3 SEs is most relevant for you.

Now, which is the better search?

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Note: This happens when I check the Custom install instead of the Typical install.

I just wanted to update to the latest version of YM and during installation, it prompted me an already “checked” checkbox for the search option. Tried to click on it to uncheck to no avail. Darn, that’s no glitch! That was intended. Why the hell would I revert to Yahoo Search from Google?

I can only uncheck it if I use the Typical install, of which by the way also forces users to install the Toolbar and Yahoo! extras. So I am forced to choose between the lesser of two evils. No way.

I pressed “Cancel” instead.

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