House Passes 'Bono' Anti-Spyware Bill

The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the Energy & Commerce Committee's version of an anti-spyware bill. Known as the "Bono Bill," the measure has not yet been modified to incorporate the features of another House bill. That bill provided protections... continue reading »

MSN Exec: Desktop Search Will Be First 'Foray'

On a panel including search executives from major firms like Yahoo, Ask Jeeves and Amazon, MSN executive Christoper Payne said that for Microsoft "desktop will be the first foray," into the search realm. Previously, industry watchers assumed that its website... continue reading »

eBay Dominates Keyword Brands

Showing off its new keyword tracking abilities, Hitwise reported that among shopping sites, eBay is by far the brand most searched for by search engine users. Variants of eBay's name occupied three of the top fifteen brand name words. The... continue reading »

Signs Show Google Dance Upon Us Again

SearchEngineGuide reports evidence of an impeding major change in Google's calculation of which sites are relevant to which keywords. Tip-offs of an oncoming Google dance include two different bots running about the web for Google indexing pages and reports from... continue reading »

Blogs Continue Growth, RSS Feeds Help

Technorati founder David Silfry, speaking at Web 2.0 reported that there are 4.1 million blogs, with an additional one appearing every seven seconds or so. Technorati's system keeps watch over all of these diary sites. Almost half of those will... continue reading »

Viral Marketing Association Launches Manifesto

After a grueling debate in London between viral marketeer Justin Kirby and The British IAB's Danny Meadows-Klue, the Viral & Buzz Marketing Association released what they call the viral manifesto, a document defining viral marketing and expressing some best practices.... continue reading »

Google May Charge for Gmail Extras

Recent changes on the Gmail interface indicate that elements of the service may in the future require paid subscriptions. Automatic email forwarding, released two days ago quietly, is "free during the test," according to Google's help area. An email notifier,... continue reading »

Study: Word-of-Mouth Hikes Site Visit Likelihood 50 Percent

People exposed locally to the use of an online commerce site, or even discussions about it, are 50 percent more likely to try that same site. The finding comes in a Wharton study of the "neighborhood effect," word-of-mouth and other... continue reading »

E-Tailers Caught Unready for Early Holiday Shopping

Five out of six online retailers don't plan to field their holiday season promotions until November, well after the date Shop.org and BizRate say the seasonal shopping begins. Their Online Holiday Mood Study shows that shoppers have been starting... continue reading »

New Snap Search Engine Offers Pay-Per-Action

Overture co-founder Bill Gross launched a new search engine, called Snap. Preceded by much speculation, encouraged by a large PR effort, Snap turns out to be an aggregated search engine - using results mostly from LookSmart, Gigablast and Open Directory... continue reading »

15 Percent of Retail Spend Influenced by Sites, Despite Offline Purchases

People conducting product research online bought almost $300 billion worth of goods due to their research findings, The Dieringer Group reports, but only about 37 percent of those purchases were made on the web. The study found that almost two... continue reading »