A new search engine, Newssift beta was recently launched by the Financial Times Group in an attempt to attract business users to search. It allows users to build incredibly specific queries to help return very specific and relevant results. Newssift also tend to focus on business oriented sources, including magazines, blogs, newspapers and other credible sources to help maintain higher quality results.

The site will be supported financially by the sale of ad space down the right hand side of the search results. Currently these ads are not contextually driven based on a user’s search, but plans for the change are in the works for a future release. Read more…

Thursday, Yahoo announced a new Search Monkey feature that allows Flash video and documents to be embedded right on the search page. What does this do that’s out of the ordinary? It allows searchers to view embedded content without leaving the search results page they found it on.

To illustrate the difference, I’ll use an example similar to that in the Yahoo blog. We’ll compare the difference between Google and Yahoo.

Performing a Google search for hulu simpsons yields the following result:

Notice there is an image in the ad, but when the video is clicked, it opens to the site page for viewing away from the search results page. Read more…

In the following video Google’s “Business Product Manager for Trust and Safety” (phew what a title) Shuman Ghosemajumder discusses Google’s interest-based advertising, how to opt-out of it and some of the misinformation that may make the technology seem invasive.

I think this video may be helpful to you if you are curious how Google targets you with advertising content based on your online activities.

Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Product and User Experience at Google was interviewed by Charlie Rose this week.

In the interview Charlie Rose got Marissa to discuss the expected advancements Google will have within 10 years Read more…

StepForth Web Marketing is excited and proud to announce that on Tuesday, Ross Dunn, StepForth Web Marketing CEO/Founder was named as one of two finalists in the 2009 Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce Business Awards in the category of “Young Entrepreneur of the Year” (pdf).

The award “honours a business owner or founder under the age of 35 who has excelled in business; exemplified leadership and entrepreneurial skills; and demonstrated exceptional vision that has contributed to business success”. The winner will be announced at the awards ceremony taking place April 21, 2009 at the Fairmont Empress. Read more…

For all our Canadian readers out there, if you find yourself collecting Air Miles, searching Yahoo may help you get that free flight just a little bit quicker.

The Air Miles Yahoo Toolbar was recently launched, and for every 50 searches performed using the Air Miles toolbar you will earn 5 Air Miles, up to a maximum of 30 Air Miles per month. Read more…

Google is developing a service to try and impact electrical energy consumption by allowing users to easily track their energy usage.

PowerMeter software will tap into the information provided by “smart meters” installed currently on many homes. It will display to customers exactly how they are using power and relate it to specific appliances in the home to help them to pin point the biggest contributors to their consumption.

Read more…

Last night I was looking through some of my favourite You Tube videos and stumbled across something of which I was completely unaware. You Tube is muting sound from a lot of user’s videos.

I am a huge Lord of the Rings buff and avidly seek related content on You Tube. One of my all-time favourite videos is called Namarie, a recitation of Galadriel’s lament. This is a poem taken from the Fellowship of the Ring book, recited in spoken Quenyan, an Elvish language created by J.R.R Tolkien. The original audio consisted of a reading by the person who posted the video, over a background sample of the Lothlorien track from the Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack.

This was one of the most hauntingly beautiful pieces I have ever seen on You Tube and I have watched it often. I say “was”, because as I found out last night, You Tube has completely ruined it by removing the audio. Read more…

Fourth quarter financial results for 2008 are in at both Yahoo (pdf) and Google, and while Google still showed a sizable profit, the numbers show that 2009 may be a tough year for both search giants.

Yahoo
In Q4, Yahoo saw revenues down 1% compared to the same period, ringing in at $1,806 million. While revenues approaching $2 billion sounds good on the surface, when you take away the expenses and the dust settles, they were left with a net loss of more than $303 million!

2008 on the whole wasn’t a total loss for Yahoo. Their revenues finished with a 3 percent increase compared to 2007, at $7,209 million and an overall net income of over $424 million. This number is certainly reasonable, at least by my standards, but when you look at the huge loss in the 4th quarter alone, unless things get turned around, 2009 could show to be a tough year for Yahoo.

Google
Just like Yahoo, Google also took a hit in the fourth quarter of 2008, only their hit managed to remain on the plus side. Compared to the three quarters preceding (all over $1.2 billion) Q4 saw a net income of only $382 million.

While 2008 saw total revenues reach nearly $5 billion more than 2007, at $21.7 billion, Google’s net income for 2008 was nearly identical, only about $20 million more than 2007.

If you find that your Yahoo email account is being hit with too much spam, all that junk may be significantly cut back in the very near future.

On Jan 20th, it was announced that Yahoo will begin using the anti-spam services of Abaca to help protect Yahoo users from spam, phishing, and other email attacks.

Abaca is the only anti-spam company to guarantee a rate of 99% accuracy.

“As one of the world’s leading Internet companies, we take the security of our users very seriously,” said John Kremer, vice president of Yahoo! Mail. “Abaca offers superior e-mail security capabilities and has built a reputation for reducing unsolicited e-mail within mailboxes. We believe that by deploying Abaca’s solution with our anti-spam toolkit, we will offer Yahoo! Mail users not only added email security, but an enhanced user experience as well.”