The Seattle-Search.com Blog

Yahoo is staking its claim to an expanded role in the Puget Sound thanks to former Microsoft Windows GM David Sobeski, a Yahoo senior VP, who is playing a formative role in formation of the new Yahoo office.

Sobeski disclosed to the Seattle P-I’s Todd Bishop the basics of the new office — 115,000 square feet at Bellevue’s One Twelfth @ Twelfth, enough space for 500 to 600 people — but declined to talk in detail about hiring plans or the work that will take place there.

Sobeski’s remarks on the region were particularly trenchant: “”You’ve got Microsoft, you’ve got Amazon, you’ve got Google, you’ve got Adobe. You’ve got all these guys up here. Now you have us, and you have a pretty good talent pool. You’ve got the University of Washington. … The Pacific Northwest actually has a huge concentration of engineers, of technical people. And it’s not the old COBOL kind of guys. It’s the guys who can go figure out these hard algorithms, be it search, be it contextual advertising, be it data mining, be it any of these things. Because what you really want are just smart algorithmic people. That’s what you’re going for. Is there any difference between writing Windows kernel and writing a great data algorithm? Well, yeah, I get that there’s a difference, but you know what? It’s those smart guys who can build those algorithms, who can do it efficiently, that you want.”

Making the first acquisition in its 11-year history, MSNBC.com, a joint venture between Microsoft and the NBC Universal division of GE, is diving into citizen journalism and social media by acquiring Newsvine.com, a six-employee startup that has helped pave the way in what is known as “participatory journalism.”

Newsvine CEO Mike Davidson will report to Charlie Tillinghast, president of MSNBC Interactive News and publisher of msnbc.com, but otherwise, Newsvine will continue to operate independently.

Tillinghast said msnbc.com was racing to foster a community among its readers and to exploit the power of unmoderated user commentary and ranking of the news. Ideally, he said in an interview, the site would design and build its own tools, but Newsvine, headquartered in downtown Seattle a few minutes from msnbc.com’s newsroom, “is just a great fit.”

Rand Fishkin believes in transparency.  He runs his company, SEOmoz, like he does his blog, publicly.

A few months ago he hired SEM consultant Andy Beal to advise on the growth of the business. Rand reported Beal’s findings and recommendations to his audience of SEO enthusiasts and commentators. He also asked this blogging community whether he should accept outside investment in his agency.

Reactions were mixed, but Rand appears to have squarely connected with two VC firms — Ignition Partners and Curious Office.  Today he announced an investment of $1.25 million in his firm.  Rand also disclosed that he has invited Zillow’s Vanessa Fox to join his board of directors.

SEOmoz is now on a mission to add products and services that add value  to search marketing, right here in the Emerald City. As Rand puts it, “We literally have a hundred different ideas for tools, search analytics, tracking, guides, [and] resources.”  Clearly, Rand also wants to get into the training end of the business as well.  Will all of that amount to the earnings multiples that will impress his new VC partners in terms of ROI? Only time will tell.

With this new beginning , Rand also sees a potential ending.  He writes, “…When we decided to accept this money, we took a step in a direction that will probably end with the sale of SEOmoz (as we’re most likely not a target to go public). I think that this is one of the other big fears that members and commenters had - and I can completely empathize. However, I will say this - I’m in this for the long haul, and even though SEOmoz may, in 4-7 years, be part of another company, I’m going to do my damndest to make sure that all the great things about us get preserved.”

Seattle’s Marchex, which recently acquired VoiceStar, launched 100,000 local search domains and is about to relaunch OpenList as a new, comprehensive local destination site, has issued a local report entitled “Unlocking the Potential of the Local Internet.” The document is a very good overview of the state of the market (with data) and the opportunity. Here’s where you can download the report. Simultaneously, the company has started a local blog called “LocalPoint.”

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.”

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.

Following a 41 percent reduction in its work force last month, Jobster has turned about face by inking a deal to become the exclusive job search provider for Facebook. According to the Wall Street Journal, Jobster will unveil new features that will allow employers to post jobs for free to the site and for job hunters to attach video clips to their online profiles. Jobster’s switch to free job postings is an attempt “to make a large dent in Monster’s billion dollar a year revenue stream” opines TechCrunch.

Jobster is the first career development website to make extensive use of Web 2.0 technologies to help individuals connect with people, information and opportunities to help them further their careers. In an industry first, the new Jobster offers employers unlimited free personalized job postings, enabling jobseekers to meet the hiring manager or recruiter for a particular position, and immediately presents employers with potential matching candidates.

Dogpile.com, the search engine that combines the top results from all the leading search engines, ranked highest in overall customer satisfaction among Internet users, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2006 Residential Online Service Customer Satisfaction Study. The study was based on responses from 10,787 residential customers of Internet service providers nationwide. Included in the study for the first time, Dogpile.com scored top ratings from Internet service subscribers in all three factors that determine overall satisfaction within the segment: ease of use, functionality and results. As the Web’s leading metasearch engine, Dogpile.com meets the needs of Internet users by offering the most comprehensive view of the Web and helping them efficiently retrieve the most relevant results.
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