1157 US patents containing “Search engine”

The newly released Google patent search tool provides an endless opportunity for digging up the bizarre and downright unbelievable.  However, it is also useful to glimpse what some of the larger internet monoliths are pondering.  Try using the tool to find all terms containing the words “search engine” ; all the usual culprits pop up – Overture, Napster, Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Google.  It is also fascinating to see the the age of many filings – their subject matter is as relevant now as they obviously predicted it would be. 

I can smell the scent of lawyers from here.

Incliment weather for Yahoo!?

Missed this yesterday, but was rather tied up in budgets and planning. Weather Report: Yahoo! Search Index Update

Must remember to dig into my Yahoo! keywords and backlinks on Friday.

Clash of cultures?

According to complete.com, Yahoo!’s peanut butter episode has done little to stem the decline in it’s share of the search audience.  Indeed, the Sunnyvale lads and ladies are suffering one of the worst declines in the last year. 

And these figures are certainly reflected in our own visitors stats.  Google has been on a consistent rise for 9 months – with a huge jump around August for some unexplained reason.  Oddly, I still feel Yahoo!’s search results are often far less spammy than Google – but is the brand any longer as strong.  The complete.com evidence would suggest they are being out-marketed by the whole search industry including Ask.  And most had written them off as a major player earlier this year.

Yahoo backlinks down

Yup – 2nd consecutive week to see a drop in backlinks from Yahoo!  And we are not the only ones.  Is a Yahoo Update Underway?

Traffic is strategy and pages indexed has not changed – so nothing to get too worried about yet but, as we do not have 1,000’s of spammy inbound links, it is of slight concern.