Lots of swearing. Lots and lots. Lots. Sensitive, easily-offended non-Australians have been warned.

Hilarious video featuring Ernest The Search Engine.

Ernest is an engine of the train variety, who wants to be “just as fast as Google”, and to become a dot.com millionaire.

• What I want is anonymous upload
• What I want is the ability to specify “use the browser default”
• What I want is something much simpler and much more integrated
• What I want is rel=”spammer”
• What I want is a phone/addressbook/personal schedule AND no more
• What I want is a laser-based shower add-on that zaps hair from any part of the body
• What i want is the insects not the group
• What I want is an internet application with a desktop frontend, with a choice of providers you can plug into
• What I want is a Bluetooth digital hearing aid
• What I want is a proper cup of coffee
• What I want is to constantly discover new ideas, new restaurants, new places to go
• What I want is not that important, and no one cares anyway
• What I want is a super simple way to buy an amp and speakers (of good quality) and just plug them into a box that in turn, talks wirelessly to all of my PC’s and/or hard disks
• What I want is a laptop that does not require electricity
• What i want is a little award, about as long as a banner, but a little thicker
• What I want is a good digital lifestyle and technology magazine
• What I want is a lot simpler than that

Solve someones problem, make money….

The over-hyped local search market looks like it may finally be arriving, and who do you think has the biggest market share? Google? Yahoo? Dmoz?

Heh.

It looks like Yahoo! & Google are neck and neck, according to Comscore:

Most local searches appeared to be commercial in nature, which is why this market is potentially so lucrative:

“Based on a recent comScore Search Satisfaction study, 41 percent of those conducting a local search were searching for something in their home area, as opposed to searching for information on businesses in locales that they intended to visit. Additionally, among those searching in their home area, 59 percent indicated they were searching for a restaurant or something entertainment-related, such as a theater, theme park or an attraction for sightseeing. Another 52 percent said they were searching specifically for a business phone number or address. Two out of five local searchers (41 percent) were looking for information on a local service in their home area, including car rental office, dry cleaner or lawyer“

Search Mash is a site for testing out new Google interface ideas, although the current test looks a bit like A9.

Click the “more web pages” button at the bottom of the first serp. There’s a very cool scrolling feature, which I certainly hope they implement. SEOs will love that, as it will make it easier for users to search beyone the first couple of pages.

I always liked A9, but their marketing was a disaster, in my humble opinion. A9 appears too corporate, and they really need someone to take those great ideas and get grassroots buy-in. The Amazon data gives it a great edge over other competitors.

Thx SEW.

Way back in deepest darkest web history, 1997, CNet reported:

“Looking ahead…Forrester expects online news to be dominated by two to three titans who get the upper hand in distribution technology and content.“

Uh-huh. They thought it would be a duel between CNN, ABC, and MSNBC. Turns out the titan was none of these, the Google titan wasn’t even born.

Newspapers have been losing ground ever since. They’ve needlessly given away market share to young upstarts who don’t lock their pages behind paid subscription walls. Some newspapers still insist on doing so, and they’ll surely slip further and further behind as a result. The money is in the traffic.

Time:

“On the one hand, newspapers are expected to supply their content free on the Web. On the other hand, their most profitable advertising–classifieds–is being lost to sites like Craigslist…Meanwhile, there is the blog terror: people are getting their understanding of the world from random lunatics riffing in their underwear, rather than professional journalists with standards and passports“

It’s tough being in the newspaper game, but the Time article does raise a good point:

“And where do these wannabes get most of their information? From newspapers, of course. But that is mere irony. It doesn’t pay the cost of a Baghdad bureau.“

As the article suggests, the newspapers need to adapt their revenue models and leverage their brands. They need to start competiting directly with the Craiglists of this world, if it’s not too late. They certainly shouldn’t be looking a gift horse in the mouth - search engine traffic.

Here’s a prediction. Those who court search engine traffic will survive. Those who block it, will end up in the same place as the random lunatics riffing in their underwear.

Incisive Media, owner of the Search Engine Strategies Conference, has been sold. Danny Sullivan left Incisive recently.

“Private equity firm Apax said on Thursday it had agreed to acquire Incisive Media in a cash deal that values the financial information provider at around 199 million pounds“

Brett spotted it (WMW Login Required) slipped everyone else by, it seems

Good idea. Spreading the knowledge.

“Supported by the people of California, the university has embraced public service as an essential part of its mission since 1868. The content on this page —drawn from campus seminars, courses and events—is just one part of UC Berkeley’s commitment to the broadest possible dissemination of knowledge for the benefit of our state, the nation and the world“

There’s a few lectures on search engines here.

Tip: GOS

Internet people often talk about the attention economy. For those that haven’t heard the term, or if you work for a newspaper, attention economy refers to the idea that attention is a scarce commodity, so websites compete for this attention. This attention can be costly to aquire, so websites usually don’t actively try and get less of it.

Trouble is, it seems no one told the newspapers:

“Publishers around the world are collectively putting their foot down against search engines in a new global initiative to regain control of their content.“

They are getting together in order to try and reduce the level of search traffic they receive:

“The initiative, called Acap (Automated content access protocol), is intended to stop search engines aggregating content in breach of permission or copyright.“

All this will achieve is to shift attention from them to their indexed competitors. The newspapers may “get it” eventually, then we’ll see a mad scramble in entirely the opposite direction, if it isn’t too late.

These types of initiatives could put pressure on the search engines in the short term, if done en masse. But there is simply too much money on the table for it to work long term. The attention has to go somewhere, and economies hate a vacuum.

New online newspapers will surely fill it. A few hundred new online “papers” have probably sprung up overnight.

UPDATE: Google’s official word on the subject. They’re not saying much, but I think it’s quite clear who is holding all the cards. “… if a newspaper does not want to be part of Google News we remove their content from our index –- all they have to do is ask”.

A bit behind the times, aren’t they? Article on Click Fraud, doesn’t contain much new, other than a few case studies about clients who are getting increasingly frustrated with the refund process:

“But as clicks from ZapMeta kept arriving, Fleischmann demanded in an Aug. 7 e-mail to Google: “You should be trusting us and doing something about [ZapMeta] as a partner, instead of finding more ways to refute our data or requests.” (BusinessWeek’s e-mail to ZapMeta’s site and its registered owner, Kevin H. Nguyen, elicited no response.)“

Interesting side note. V7N Blog got a hat-tip for helping spread the Click Fraud story. Not sure if we were responsible for the wider up-take or not, but it’s good to know the grass-roots media are breaking stories well before the mainstream media.

Danny Sullivan posts about how search engines haven’t really changed much, despite repeated attempts to dress them up.

“Overall, I have a big dose of skepticism when anyone tells me how search is going to radically change in terms of presentation. Most of the wacky things I’ve seen over the years don’t really improve the search experience — and they definitely tend not to consider the strong habit that years of using the DOS Of Search interface have ingrained in searchers, for better or worse.“

Indeed. Why make something more complicated that it needs to be? Search is about utility - answer the question, and get out of the way.

The design of the book hasn’t changed much, either.