Search Headlines – Yahoo & Wikipedia

New Features Added To Yahoo Site Explorer

The Yahoo Search Blog announced a few new features to Yahoo! Site Explorer today, including authentication via Meta tags, detailed errors on authentication failures, the Site Explorer Badge, and the ability to delete URLs from the index with one click.

The new version of Site Explorer is said to have been crafted based on user feedback gathered from feedback forums, message boards and from SES Chicago. Good work, guys.

Stuff I didn’t know about Wikipedia

There’s been a lot of talk lately about whether Google gives Wikipedia special treatment in its search results, which is perhaps what sparked Phil Lenssen’s interview with Mathias Schindler. If you haven’t read it, you should. Mathias reveals a lot of good information I was previously unaware of. [Like the lamest edit wars page, I spent all last night reading that and giggling. -Susan] – Wow, and Monday’s your big TV night too! :)

It’s a rather lengthy interview (at least for my ADD brain. Look, it’s raining outside) so I’ll go ahead and share some of the tidbits I found interesting:

• Google donated 187 shares of Google stock to the Wikimedia foundation.
• Forty to fifty percent of newly created Wikipedia pages show up in Google’s index within just 100 hours of creation.
• Google and Wikipedia currently collaborate on Google Co-op, Google Earth, and Google is also said to be scanning Wikipedia "for fact extraction" results.

I don’t know what to make of all this Google/Wikipedia talk. They’re just too chummy for me. I’d like to see Google back up a bit and to have Wikipedia NOT rank in the top three for every generic keyword phrase. I know people love Wikipedia, but this just doesn’t seem right. Wikipedia shouldn’t rank first for everything.

Fun Finds

Barry writes that Google has added Docs & Spreadsheet Integration with Gmail. The official Google announcement came yesterday, but I’m pretty sure I’ve been opening Word docs in Google Docs & Spreadsheet for at least a week or so now. And this may be old news as I’m usually blind to these things, but I also learned that Blogger has been integrated with Docs & Spreadsheets, as well. It looks like Google is working hard to flesh this one out. Hooray for cross product integration.

Guy Kawasaki pens The Top Ten Stupid Ways to Hinder Market Adoption, outlining some of the more popular ways companies discourage searchers from using or interacting with their site. I have to say, I’m with Guy on pretty much every one of these. Have you ever tried to explain to someone how to get to a window that doesn’t generate a URL? It’s like trying to explain to my mother over the phone how to program her universal remote to turn on the television. Seriously not fun.

This isn’t tied to any one piece of news but I’m quickly finding that Search Marketing Gurus is the place to be. The last time I checked, Li’s Reader Roll was showing the faces of Dave Pasternack (awesome!), Andrea Schoemaker, SEOFangirl, Graywolf, Jim Boykin, Marie Howell, and Lee Odden. Geez, how am I supposed to top that? Looking good, Li. :)

Lisa Barone is a writer, content marketer & VP of strategy at Overit Media. She's also a very active Twitterer, much to the dismay of the rest of the world.

See Lisa's author page for links to connect on social media.