Week in review: Net portal wars | CNET News.com: "Yahoo's one-two combination began when the Cable News Network's online arm tapped it to replace Google to power its search results. The switchover, which went live Wednesday, means that Yahoo will provide algorithmic and paid results whenever CNN users conduct a search query on the site.
Yahoo will also begin offering 'virtually unlimited storage' for its paid e-mail customers and will upgrade free users to 100MB from it current 4MB, in a challenge to Google's Gmail service. The upgrade is part of an overall enhancement for Yahoo Mail that will launch this summer"
Spam ban:
Search engines delete adware company | CNET News.com
Search engines delete adware company | CNET News.com: "Yahoo and Google have disabled links to controversial adware maker WhenU after the company was accused of engaging in unauthorized practices aimed at boosting its search rankings, WhenU's top executive confirmed Thursday.
The practices came to light following an investigation by antispyware crusader Ben Edelman, a Harvard student who found that the company used a technique known as 'cloaking' to dupe search engines into favorably listing decoy Web pages that direct people to other destinations, once they click on the link...
WhenU's efforts to manipulate search engine results are aimed to offset negative perceptions about the company, Edelman said.
His investigation found that WhenU created Web pages that borrowed from news articles published by various news Web sites about the company in a bid to drive up its rankings on Google and Yahoo. One such article, published by CNET's News.com, was used to cast a favorable light on WhenU in a court opinion about its pop-up ads. That Web page, among several similar pages, was fed to Google and Yahoo's search crawlers, which are used to index the Web.
Once those pages were indexed and listed in search results for WhenU, the listings were used to redirect people who clicked to other WhenU pages.
"WhenU turned to the Web to try to clean up its image, after facing widespread criticism from consumers, businesses and policy makers. But by resorting to misleading and prohibited methods, WhenU crossed a serious ethical line," Edelman wrote in an e-mail interview
"
posted by Jen @ 5:32 AM
<< Home