From Ben Goodger's blog:

Brian has been one of the most crucial elements to the success of Mozilla software over the past few years, with his work all over the Mozilla code - I remember him first adding mousewheel support back in 2000, then moving with tenacity into many other areas of code. Over the past few years Brian has been invaluable to Gecko development, working on many areas that have resulted in performance improvements and new features, while also having time to work on application level features such as the Linux installer, GNOME integration and the password manager. Great to have you on board!

(Press Release)

Google Inc. today announced it has agreed to acquire Urchin Software Corporation, a San Diego, California based web analytics company.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Urchin is a web site analytics solution used by web site owners and marketers to better understand their users' experiences, optimize content and track marketing performance. Urchin tools are available as a hosted service, a software product and through large web hosting providers. These products are used by thousands of popular sites on the Internet.

Google plans to make these tools available to web site owners and marketers to better enable them to increase their advertising return on investment and make their web sites more effective.

We want to provide web site owners and marketers with the information they need to optimize their users' experience and generate a higher return-on-investment from their advertising spending, said Jonathan Rosenberg, vice president of product management, Google. This technology will be a valuable addition to Google's suite of advertising and publishing products.

The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions. Google anticipates that the acquisition will close before the end of April.

More:

• Google Agrees To Acquire Urchin (Urchin.com)
• (Google.com)

To analyze Google results on several Google data centers we have developped a free online tool called . This tool allows you to search 17 Google data centers in one click and to view these 17 results in one window. You can see if the results are the same or not.

You can use this tool by typing:

• a keyword or a keyphrase
• a link: command
• a site: command

Our tests For our analysis we have decided to use link: command . Why link: command? Because we know that Google only updates link: command results approximately once a month.

If you do use our tool by typing link:prweaver.com you will see that there 3 "groups" of datacenters:

• "Group A" that displays 865 results
• "Group B" that displays 189 result
• "Group C" that displays 217 results

We have tested it with several URL and found the same type of results with 3 "groups". If you do the same test for your site, do you see the same 3 "groups"?

As we keep track of our backlinks results over time for some of our sites, we have even noticed that one group displays the same results than in January and another group displays the same results than February.

Our conclusions for this test:

• One group of data centers displays results from January
• Another group of data centers displays results from February
• The third group displays results results for March

List of data centers that displays March backlinks results:

• 216.239.37 www-va
• 216.239.39 www-dc
• 216.239.59 www-gv
• 216.239.63
• 64.233.161
• 64.233.167
• 64.233.171
• 64.233.179
• 64.233.185
• 66.102.9 www-lm
• 66.102.11 www-kr

List of data centers that displays February:

• 64.233.183
• 64.233.187

List of data centers that displays January:

• 66.102.7 www-mc
• 64.233.189
• 216.239.57 www-cw
• 216.239.53 www-in

(for each data center, we have used the .104 server. For example, for data center 216.239.53, we tested it on )

Questions

Why Google has decided to do this? According to several SEO, Google might test several algorithms at the same time. Other think that Google is broken (hardware or software problems with its huge index).

We have done a similar test using keywords instead of link command but the results did not match whith what we have found with our first test... So it's not so simple!

To analyze several keywords rankings on several Google Data centers we have also used Agent Web Ranking (The full version of this software is free for 15 days, download and try it here).

If you have also run similar tests, do not hesitate to share your results here!

Google has started removing AFP content from , after the French news agency filed a $17.5m law suit for copyright infringement.

Google has said it is to remove content from Agence France Presse, the French newswire, from its own news aggregation service, Google News.

The move is in reaction to the company launching legal action against the search engine last week accusing Google of copyright infringement for including AFP story headlines and précises on Google news. The company is seeking $17.5m in damages and the removal of AFP content from the site.

Google is currently in the process of removing AFP content, but has not released a schedule for when the removal will be complete.

Source: DMeurope

The Hyderabad centre of Google provides engineering, online sales and human resources functions. The online sales and service team in Hyderabad supports Google's English language advertisers across the world.

Google also has an R&D centre in Bangalore that is involved in product development and research for its search tool.

Google Blog has a cool photo of :

Via

Today, Google continued its effort to provide publishers with the easiest and most effective contextual advertising program by launching new Google AdSense features. Google AdSense quickly and easily matched relevant text-based ads to the content of web pages, providing new revenue for publishers and additional relevant information for users.

These features for the program announced today include Ad Links by Google, which provides publishers with another way to earn revenue and a new way to offer their users more information, payments in Euros, and a test of Electronic Funds Transfer, which enables publishers' earnings to be deposited directly into their bank account.

The Ad Links are a new form of text-based advertising for publisher pages.

You can see an example of the links at:

This should show ads in the language of the user's interface]. Publishers simply place the Ad Links code on their web pages, and Google uses its ad targeting technology to populate a new ad unit with contextually relevant topic titles. When users click any of these topics, they are taken to a page with related ads. These ads provide additional related information for users, while publishers benefit from the revenue on ad clicks.

In addition to new revenue opportunities, Google is also making AdSense easier for publishers in France by giving them the option of receiving payment via Euro checks. Publishers can now also participate in the beta test of Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT). The EFT test enables publishers to choose to have their AdSense earnings deposited directly into their bank account and greatly speed up and simplify the payment process.

According to Microsoft Watch, Mark Lucovsky, one of Microsoft's key Windows architects, has defected to Google.

A 16-year Microsoft veteran, Lucovsky was one of a handful of "Distinguished Engineers" at Microsoft. He is credited as one of the core dozen engineers that came from Digital Equipment Corp. to Microsoft and built the Windows NT operating system. He was charged with building the Windows NT executive, kernel, Win32 run-time and other key elements of the operating system. NT was the precursor to Windows Server.

Mark Lucovsky recently said I am not sure I believe anymore, that Microsoft "knows how to ship software".

Why Google would need a Windows architect? It seems that Google's architecture is based on Linux solutions. But as someone says on Slashdot: Google is setting out to build a web service infrastructure, powered by its 100,000 node (at last count) Linux supercomputer. And after all, this guy's job (Mark Lucovsky's job) at Microsoft was to build a web infrastructure.

Via Slashdot and John Battelle

Here are great blog posts reporting Search Engine Strategies 2005 conferences in New-York:

• Blogs, Boards, and Posts: Capturing Consumer Buzz Online by Steve Rubel
• , by Nathan Weinberg
• , by Nathan Weinberg
• , by Nathan Weinberg
• , by Nathan Weinberg
• , by Nathan Weinberg
• , by Nathan Weinberg
• , by Nathan Weinberg
• Search Forecast and Outlook: Profiting From Growth Through 2009, by Search Engine Roundtable
• The Search Landscape, by Search Engine Roundtable
• Searcher Behavior, by Search Engine Roundtable
• The Search Landscape, by Search Engine Roundtable
• Searcher Behavior, by Search Engine Roundtable
• Search Algorithm Research & Developments, by Search Engine Roundtable
• Search Algorithms and Research, by Search Engine Roundtable
• Keynote with Jerry Yang, by Search Engine Roundtable
• What is Spam?, by Search Engine Roundtable
• Perfecting Paid Listings, by Search Engine Roundtable
• Indexing Summit, by Search Engine Roundtable
• News & Webfeed Search, by Search Engine Roundtable
• Webfeeds, Blogs & Search, by Search Engine Roundtable
• Search Convergence (and the Future of Search), by Search Engine Roundtable
• Search Convergence, by Search Engine Roundtable
• Local Search Marketing Tactics, by Search Engine Roundtable
• Brand Summit: Life After Geico - Google, by Search Engine Roundtable
• Measuring Offline Sales & Conversions, by Search Engine Roundtable
• Local Search Marketing Tactics, by Search Engine Roundtable
• Reaching Out To Europe, by Search Engine Roundtable

Yes, this is a lot of articles to read, but I think they are must-do if you can't go to New York!

Google Maps are now available on Google Local on both the and sites. Before today, Google was using maps provided by a third party on Google Local.

After finding the desired entry on a Google Local results page and clicking, you'll now see a page with a variety of information about the business that Google has been compiled from various open web sites ().

This page provides additional information (links to menus, hours of operation, payment info, etc.) automatically extracted from open web sources like Amazon.com, CitySearch.com, and Frommers.

Source: SEW Blog

According to Andy Baio, Yahoo appears to be testing out a contextual ad program for small websites, like Google's AdSense:

Ken Rudman is a product manager at Yahoo-owned Overture, and his blog features contextual Overture ads throughout. His homepage shows the vertical two-ad format, monthly archives show a three-ad horizontal format, and individual entries show another variation of the horizontal format. The ads have decent relevancy, especially considering its early state.

The Javascript that generates the ad IFrame is hosted on Overture's server: http://ypn-js.overture.com/partner/js/ypn.js. The domain name refers to "ypn," which might be an acronym for the ad program... Yahoo Publishing Network, maybe?

What do you think of that? Phil Ringnalda found them awful.

10two.com blog points out that these ads look like Content Match. But Content Match is served from cmhtml.overture.com, whereas these new ads are served from ypn.overture.com...

Via and John Batelle