The Seattle-Search.com Blog

The Healia health search engine (www.healia.com) won the “Search 2.0 Shootout Award” at the Search Insider Summit in Palm Springs, California this week. Healia was selected for the Award over four other “disruptive” search technologies by popular vote of Summit attendees as the “most exciting, original, and useful [search] offering.”

The Summit brings brand marketers, agency decision makers and search marketing experts together to explore the search marketing trends and strategies. Read the rest of this entry »

Bellevue Square, one of the top ten retail centers in the U.S., has added free wireless fidelity (WiFi) Internet access as a new amenity for its 16 million annual shoppers. It’s the only shopping center in the Pacific Northwest to offer the service.

“We’ve turned a shopping hot spot into a WiFi hotspot too,” said Glen Bachman, vice president of operations. “Today’s shoppers are smart and sophisticated and the Internet is a part of their life at home and at work. Now they can enjoy shopping at the Square and log in to check email or surf the web. What a great way to relax while the family is shopping, stay on top of your work, or simply enjoy the atmosphere at The Square while downloading email.” Read the rest of this entry »

Wiley Publishing has recently announced plans to publish a book co-authored by ZAAZ Analytics Director, Jason Burby and CEO, Shane Atchison. Actionable Web Analytics: Using Data to Make Smart Business Decisions will provide a detailed understanding of how businesses can use web analytics to set goals, develop strategies to achieve them, and make adjustments to optimize performance along the way.

In the meantime, for more analytics insight and advice, check out these helpful articles by Burby and Atchison:

Web Analytics: Are People on Your Team Accountable?

Data Smog: The Too-Much-Data Problem

Site Changes? Tag with Care for Better Measurement

Web Analytics: The Results of Tabbed Browsing

Analytics Staffing

Bellevue’s InfoSpace Inc., makers of a variety of online and mobile services, has introduced Zoo.com, a search engine meant to help children aged 8-13 search the Internet while filtering out sexually explicit content.

Like other meta-search services from InfoSpace which compile results from multiple search engines, Zoo.com will consolidate search results from Google, Yahoo and Wikipedia, as well as news results from ABC News, Fox News and Yahoo.

The engine filters the results against a database of more than 50,000 “adult” words and phrases, to reduce the risk of children’s exposure to inappropriate or harmful material on the Web. Content pertaining to guns, violence and unlawful drugs is also filtered.

In a test of the service conducted by Seattle P:-I Report Dan Richman,If a search uses a preflagged word or phrase, Zoo.com returns no results and displays the notice, “Search cannot be completed.” Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft has released an impressive, computer-generated 3-D mapping site known as Spaceland. How can you use Spaceland? Let us count the ways. You can use Spaceland for driving directions, use it for searching desintations, and even find the best commute route with  real-time traffic monitoring (you can even use an XBox controller to navigate inside your new 3-D world.

Microsoft is also experimenting with the use of ads in its new 3-D GIS universe. These are supplied by Massive, the company Microsoft acquired in May of 2006, and that originally served ads in games and from Microsoft’s homegrown ad platform. While the ads are relatively large, they don’t detract  from Spaceland.

Amazon has two Q&A services in quiet development. Nownow and Askville each attempt to answer people’s questions in their own way.

Askville is a web based service that allows users to ask and answer each other questions. Users can earn points within the system for asking questions as well as answering them. Best answers are chosen by the group of question asker and answerers, where the asker gets one more vote than the answerers This service is very similar to Naver’s Knowledge Search, Wondir, Yahoo! Answers and Live QnA. Askville rewards users with “coins,” a virtual currency that will be redeemable in another community named Questville slated for release in early 2007.

NowNow is a mobile question-answer service that has a new twist on it. It is going to use Amazon’s own Mechnical Turk to handle the answers. It is free during the testing phase. The service is currently in closed Beta. Check the NowNow FAQ for more info.

Thanks to O’Reilly’s Brady Forrest (who will be sponsoring an Ignite Seattle non-conference tech-gathering event Dec. 7th) for this scoop!

Today Microsoft officially ships its Zune digital-media player and throws open the doors to its new Zune Marketplace digital-music store while also shuttering its MSN Music store.

And there’s still more Microsoft to come. Microsoft Office 2007 hit the Golden Master mark last Monday signifying it was ready to ship to manufacturing plants. On Wednesday, Windows Vista was “RTMed” (”released to manufacturing”).

Vista will make its retail debut Jan. 30, and Office is scheduled for “early 2007.”

Is it any wonder that Microsoft’s shares closed the week above $29 for the first time since November 2004. Read the rest of this entry »

Mondays and Tuesdays remain the busiest online shopping days during the holiday season, showing 25 percent greater activity than the rest of the week, yet consumer holiday shopping behavior differs greatly by industry, according to the 6^th Annual Atlas Holiday Shopping Report released today. Atlas (www.AtlasSolutions.com), a leading provider of digital marketing technologies and an operating unit of aQuantive, Inc., also predicts the busiest online holiday shopping day will be Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2006. Read the rest of this entry »