Two Wall Street Journal writers conducted a video search taste test, and found AOL Video Search, Yahoo Video Search and Blinkx TV to be the best, as they search the entire Web. Sites like YouTube.com, Google Video and iTunes also perform video searches, but these services are limited to whatever is hosted on their respective servers. Video searches are currently limited to looking up words that appear in a video's title text, or in descriptions or information embedded in a video file in the form of "metadata" or "tags," while a few TV shows include closed captioning data that is …

Yahoo is scrapping its once grand plans to be a producer of television style programming on the Web, says Yahoo Media Group Chief Lloyd Braun. The group is now shifting its focus to acquiring content from media companies and users. This represents a major shift in attitude for Braun and for Yahoo, which brought in the former Hollywood executive to boost the company's original content offerings. Suggestions had been made in recent weeks that Braun was on his way out at Yahoo, but yesterday he called a meeting--with the endorsement of company CEO Terry Semel--that will outline the new strategy. …

It will be a tall order indeed for Microsoft to unseat Google as the top Internet search destination. MSN Search has less than a third of the search volume of the industry leader, and according to a Wired report, Google's users are so hard-wired into using its Web search they have to consciously try not to use the search engine just to see what another one is like. Shari Thurow spends so much time using Google she makes a point of observing a "Google-free day." On Saturdays, she has a rule that she can use any search engine but Google--a …

At the Search Engine Strategies conference in New York yesterday, search marketing vendors unleashed a torrent of criticism at search providers Google and Yahoo over their inability to protect advertisers from click fraud,Ad Age reports. The most prevalent example of click fraud occurs when an advertiser sets up an automated system that repeatedly clicks on a competitor's sponsored link to drive up the price they pay while drying out their monthly inventory. Another form of click fraud involves an advertiser setting up a fake Web site as a search engine network affiliate, and then using an automated program to repeatedly …

While PC and video game software sales delivered soft numbers in 2005, so-called casual games have caught fire, and are now played by more than 100 million PC users, according to traffic measurement firm comScore Media Metrix. Casual games are typically described as easy-to-learn, five minute diversions like puzzle, word, trivia, card, or classic arcade games. Most casual games are sold on a per download basis, usually with a try-before-you-buy sales model. Gamers often get 30 to 60 minutes of preview time before being asked to pay to download the game for a fee that's usually under $20. Some are …

We all know Internet users have to be wary of predators and swindlers on social network sites, but what about Big Brother? Well, according to Business Week, university officials, the police and corporations are doing their best to monitor users on social sites like MySpace.com, Facebook.com and Xanga.com. Threats to both safety and privacy abound for social Web users, causing many to resort to online aliases and others to move on to lesser-known sites. Even so, the biggest social network sites continue to grow at a rapid clip. According to Hitwise, a Web consultancy and traffic monitor, social network sites …

Search engine optimization and search engine marketing work together in tandem, but while search continues to attract all the buzz, SEO is often overlooked--especially by upper management, writes iMedia columnist Paul Bruemmer. A company's Web site is ultimately what drives a company's success online, and search marketing is what fuels it, driving qualified leads to the site that have a higher probability of converting. As important as the various facets of search are--pay-per-click, paid inclusion, contextual, pay-per-call--SEO should be viewed as the foundation of a company's search strategy. Why? Because 70 percent of search click-throughs come from natural listings versus …

Analysts rushed to the aid of Google yesterday after the company's CFO warned a room full of reporters, investors and analysts that the search giant's growth would probably slow considerably. Several analysts said George Reyes' comments were taken out of context, and actually advised investors to buy Google at $362.62. "Search monetization gains have largely been realized," Reyes said in a speech at the Millennium Broadway Hotel in New York. He said future growth would come from other "organic" factors such as an increasing number of search queries. Reyes said he hasn't turned "bearish," but admitted that "at the end …

If News Corp.'s plan is to make My Network TV compatible with any Internet-enabled devices--including cell phones, portable game devices, even the PlayStation 3--then it will have securely locked-in (for the time being anyway) the upper hand in the race to reach technology-empowered consumers, says the Hollywood Reporter's Diane Mermigas. With My Network TV, News Corp. is looking for new ways to develop content more cost-effectively while reaching a wider audience through backward compatibility with other media platforms. Mermigas says News Corp., more than any other big media company, has demonstrated an "intelligent vitality" to transfer its content to new-media …