Weekly Rap-up of Search Engine Industry News – 5/21 – 5/25

A summary of search related news items that occurred this week including Google to shut down arbitragers’ AdSense accounts – fact or fiction, an introduction to Kevin Ham, the world richest domainers and his success story, Technorati updates its data architecture and user interface, Google will acquire RSS management service Feedburner for $100 million in cash, Wal-Mart will begin to sell Dell computers in their stores, and finally, MyBlogLog adds new tagging features but at the same time calls social media optimizers “Schmoes.”

Monday

• Google Shutting Down Arbitragers? - Jennifer Slegg says they are while Jeremy Shoemaker says it is not so. Who to believe? Jennifer reports that numerous publishers have been receiving emails from Google the past couple of days stating that their use of their AdSense account is an unsuitable business model and that accounts would be disabled as of June 1st. It appears that the focus of these emails is towards “Made for AdSense” (MFA) sites or those doing arbitrage. If there is any good news to those who will be affected by this, Google will be paying out earnings to those publishers, so they do not need to worry that they will lose any income earned thus far.

  In contrast to Jennifer’s post, Jeremy in video format points out that Google themselves have stated in the past that they respect arbitrage as a reputable business model and as such, not all arbitragers are going to be affected by this. He feels that Google is only targeting MFA sites and not sites that offer something of quality.

Tuesday

• From Doctor To Domainer - Not necessarily news but a very interesting story of a man who was originally trained as a family doctor but put off medicine and today is one of the world’s richest domainers. Since 2000 he has quietly cobbled together a portfolio of some 300,000 domains that, combined with several other ventures, generate an estimated $70 million a year in revenue. A very inspiring story if you are one who has or is looking to discover the riches of the web.

Wednesday

• Technorati Updates Interface and More - TechCrunch reports that Technorati has made significant changes to its data architecture and user interface. CEO Dave Sifry points out that the changes are a result of Technorati’s changing user base in that more and more mainstream Internet users are now using the service. The most noticeable visual change is to the home page, which has been completely redesigned. They have also eliminated search types (keyword search, tag search and blog directory search) in favor of a single search box. All search results are returned in the format technorati.com/tag/query (example) and show results from blogs, videos, photos and audio files all on the first result page. Users can drill down into vertical results via tabs. Users who want only blog search results can now go to search.technorati.com.

• Google To Acquire Feedburner for $100 Million – The rumors have been confirmed, Google will pay $100 million in cash for Feedburner, a popular RSS management service. Loren Baker asks, “Does this mean that all of the blogs we subscribe to with RSS powered by FeedBurner will be serving Google AdSense ads?” In analyzing the deal, Kevin Newcomb reports, “The move gives Google a working feed-based ad network, but more importantly it keeps Google close to publishers, which it can then try to entice to take on more of its services. Feedburner also offers an impressive analytics package that can be incorporated into both Blogger and Google Analytics.”

Thursday

• Wal-Mart To Sell Dell PCs - CNet reports that retail giant Wal-Mart will begin to offer Dell’s lower end of PCs. The Dimension E521 which currently start at just $359 will soon be made available in more than 3,000 retail locations in the United States. This of course is a major departure from its decades-long sales strategy of selling computers strictly online. And why not? There are still many people that would rather go down to the local Fry’s Electronics, Circuit City, or best Buy to name a few and get a computer now. Will this lead to Dell computers being offered in additional retail locations? In an interview with CRN a representative from Dell made the following statement – “I think you’ll see Dell showing up in a lot more retail locations–not only here in the U.S. but also in major countries around the world over the next several quarters. So stay tuned,”

Friday

• MyBlogLog Adds Tagging But Labels Social Media Optimizers Spammers - TechCrunch reports that MyBlogLog will launch a tagging feature later this evening that will allow users to add descriptive tags to the people and blogs (called “communities”) on the service. However along with that they have encouraged users to tag so-called spammers with the tag “Schmoe.” A good name for a spammer but what does the word mean to MyBlogLog? Social Media Optimizer (SchMOe)! So apparently they think that all social media optimizers are now spammers? I don’t think so! Neither does Andy Beal, Cameron Olthuis, or Andrew Girdwood.