The Seattle-Search.com Blog

Marchex has removed the ad links from about half of its 200,000 direct navigation domains and replaced them with reviews, local search listings and search functions with the purpose of raising relevance and consumer loyalty.

Users on sites such as SeattleVeterinarian.com, as well as zip code domains that reach 96% of the postal areas in the U.S. will now be able to use local search interfaces specifically organized around business categories related to the domain in question.

Matthew Berk, lead search architect at Marchex and founder of Open List described the changes as a guided process saying, “It’s walking someone thru the decision process, so you can help them ask the questions they didn’t necessarily know to ask up front. The Open List experience has always been about refinement.”

Ads on the relaunched properties are a combination of Marchex and Yahoo ads. Marchex has a relationship with AT&T that sources their ads. The company claims 31 million unique IP addresses spanning over 200,000 domains. Open List’s brand appears on all the sites affiliated with the merger although OpenList.com has not been updated with the company’s enhanced vertical data.

Company domains offer 15 million listings for products, business and services, across 20,000 categories not unlike the yellow pages listings. Search engine visibility and the direct navigation of traffic are the points of interest in generic domains for the firm. They have begun research of user behavior to better target visitors. The only information they will make public of their studies so far, is that the practice of direct navigation has not declined since they’ve begun purchasing domain real estate.

Tacoma’s Konnects.com has launched the first professional networking platform that enables any person or organization in the world to earn revenue by creating their own professional online social network on the Konnects platform.
Konnects is a cross between Ning and Linkedin. Anyone can setup their own Konnects powered community in minutes and generate revenue through subscriptions as well as posting their own Google ads. Users have complete control over their online community with branding and communication tools as well as detailed analytical reports on community and user activity.
“We are very excited about this launch. There isn’t a tool like Konnects in the market today and we feel there is a big need to give traditional organizations a place to stay connected online,” said Jim Crabbe, Konnects CEO.
Prior to Konnects, organizations had to upload their member lists to other online professional networking sites, resulting in the organization giving up their membership base to an open ocean of online professionals. With Konnects, organizations can keep their membership connected and now have a way to generate additional revenue in the process. Organizations can even set whether their online community is open to the world or private to only their membership base.
Konnects already has relationships with newspapers, chambers of commerce, special interest groups and non profits that have created communities on the Konnects platform.

Users Can Now Search More Than 12 Million Hours of TV and Video Clips

InfoSpace has announced a partnership with blinkx, the world’s largest video search engine, to offer video search capabilities for InfoSpace’s family of metasearch brands including Dogpile.com, the award-winning search engine which returns top results from Google, Yahoo!, Windows Live and Ask.com to provide users with the most relevant and useful information. As consumer demand for online video content continues to grow, the partnership allows InfoSpace to offer users the same breadth and relevancy of video search results as it does with text-based Web search results.

“Video search has become increasingly popular among today’s Web searchers and this addition allows us to offer Dogpile users a more visual and interactive search experience,” said Brian McManus, executive vice president of the online business unit at InfoSpace. “blinkx is a leader in the video search space and we chose them to power our offering because of their extensive video content library and advanced video search technology. blinkx also provides results from a variety of video aggregators such as Brightcove, which makes this partnership a great fit for Dogpile, as the leading metasearch site in the U.S.”

Just as one world-class Seettle search conference wraps up, another is queuing up right behind. Hot on the heels of SMX Advanced, the competing Search Engine Strategies circuit will be hosting SES Travel, coming to Seattle July 26 & 27, 2007, Hosted by Elisabeth Osmeloski, editor of Search Engine Watch and adventure traveler, action sports enthusiast and travel search marketing specialist. The major players in the travel search arena will describe their services and opportunities for search marketers.

Magazine publisher and TV broadcaster Meredith Corp. announced it is buying Healia, the Seattle-based consumer health search engine, to provide more health information to its customers.Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Healia’s technology will be integrated into Meredith’s Web sites. The acquisition will also result in the expansion of Healia.com’s capabilities.

Healia President and founder Tom Eng will keep his position with the company, which will remain in the Seattle area.

Seattle’s Marchex, Inc. today announced a new relationship with Yahoo! Inc. in which Marchex will convert search ad listings from its pay-per-click engine, Enhance Interactive, into Yahoo! Sponsored Search listings.

Yahoo!’s Panama system now provides advertisers with new capabilities including geo-targeting which Marchex will utilize to provide its Enhance Interactive advertisers with more targeted campaigns based on each advertiser’s target markets.

“It is an ongoing initiative for us to offer additional quality distribution to our direct pay-per-click advertisers, and this is a continued step in that process,” said Scott Greenberg, Marchex senior vice president of advertising services. “This partnership will enable us to expand the reach of our advertisers in the United States and beyond.”

Melodeo Inc. has gone nuTsie, with a new mobile music service that allows consumers to get their entire iTunes library on their mobile phone.  The nuTsie free public beta (available immediately at www.nuTsie.com), allows anyone to easily shuffle through all of their iTunes music and playlists in hi-fi quality on their mobile phone or on the Web.nuTsie allows users to access all of their favorite iTunes music on a wide variety of today’s most popular phone models, with no expensive device upgrade required.  nuTsie is built on Melodeo’s proven high-quality, low-bandwidth mobile streaming technology, which means consumers never have to hassle with synching their phone to a computer, downloading music or dealing with limited storage capacity on their phone.

“nuTsie is part of the next generation of music services that will make listening to the stuff you like fun and easy while also taking care of the artists, labels and music publishers,” said Dave Dederer, Vice President of Music Content at Melodeo and a founding member of the GRAMMY-nominated, multi-platinum rock band The Presidents of the United States of America. “nuTsie represents the first mobile music service where everybody wins.” 

From YouTube to Yahoo!, iFilm to vSocial, Father’s Day 2007 is about to be televised. This Father’s Day, Web video-sharing has captured the world’s attention and imagination like never before.For what could be considered to be the Web’s first video-enhanced Father’s Day, Seattle Internet company Efinancial.com has posted a moving tribute to fathers and daughters everywhere. The online music video, starring award-winning R&B recording artist E. Walter Smith and American Idol contestant and StarSeach teen singing sensation, Tatiana McConnico, is being viewed and voted on by Web watchers worldwide on YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo! Video, Metacafe, iFilm, Revver, Vimeo, Vsocial and Glumbert, making Dad’s Day a truly multimedia affair.

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