Smaaz's Search Engine Blog

Yahoo! Search Update – July 2007

The Yahoo! Search Blog today posted, that a Search update is going on:

“We’ve been rolling out some changes to our fresh web data and crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms over the last few days. We expect the update will be completed by the weekend. So, as you know, throughout this process you may see some changes in ranking as well as some shuffling of the pages in the index.”

July 20th, 2007

Google Announces Second Quarter 2007 Results

Google today announced financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2007.

“Our performance once again demonstrates the strength of our core search and ads business. The growth in our global traffic combined with our ongoing improvements in monetization resulted in solid revenue growth, even in a seasonally slow quarter,” said Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. “We continue to expand our commitment to deliver compelling hosted applications to businesses of all sizes, most recently agreeing to acquire Postini and its robust set of tools for web communication for the Google Apps suite of products. At the same time, we remain focused on addressing the tremendous opportunities we see worldwide, adding the talent and building the infrastructure that will allow us to continue to provide rich user experiences to Google users around the world.”

Q2 Financial Summary

Google reported revenues of $3.87 billion for the quarter ended June 30, 2007, an increase of 58% compared to the second quarter of 2006 and an increase of 6% compared to the first quarter of 2007.  Google reports its revenues, consistent with GAAP, on a gross basis without deducting traffic acquisition costs, or TAC.  In the second quarter of 2007, TAC totaled $1.15 billion, or 30% of advertising revenues.

Google reports operating income, net income, and earnings per share (EPS) on a GAAP and non-GAAP basis. The non-GAAP measures are described below and are reconciled to the corresponding GAAP measures in the accompanying financial tables.

• GAAP operating income for the second quarter of 2007 was $1.10 billion, or 29% of revenues. This compares to GAAP operating income of $1.22 billion, or 33% of revenues, in the first quarter of 2007. Non-GAAP operating income in the second quarter of 2007 was $1.35 billion, or 35% of revenues. This compares to non-GAAP operating income of $1.41 billion, or 38% of revenues, in the first quarter of 2007.

• GAAP net income for the second quarter of 2007 was $925 million as compared to $1.0 billion in the first quarter of 2007. Non-GAAP net income in the second quarter of 2007 was $1.12 billion, compared to $1.16 billion in the first quarter of 2007.

• GAAP EPS for the second quarter of 2007 was $2.93 on 315 million diluted shares outstanding, compared to $3.18 for the first quarter of 2007 on 315 million diluted shares outstanding. Non-GAAP EPS in the second quarter of 2007 was $3.56, compared to $3.68 in the first quarter of 2007.

• Non-GAAP operating income, non-GAAP operating margin, non-GAAP net income, and non-GAAP EPS are computed net of stock-based compensation (SBC). In the second quarter of 2007, the charge related to SBC was $242 million as compared to $184 million in the first quarter of 2007. Tax benefits related to SBC have also been excluded from these non-GAAP measures. The tax benefit related to SBC was $43 million in the second quarter of 2007 and $27 million in the first quarter of 2007. Reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to GAAP operating income, operating margin, net income, and EPS are included at the end of this release.

The complete Second Quarter 2007 Results can be found at http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/revenues_q207.html.

July 20th, 2007

Ask.com to Give People Unmatched Privacy Control

Ask.com today announced it will soon be implementing a new product called AskEraser that will offer its searchers unmatched control over their privacy when searching for information on the Web.

With AskEraser, people can ensure that their search history will not be retained by Ask.com. Searchers will have easy access to AskEraser and can change their privacy preference at any time. Once selected, searchers’ privacy settings will be clearly indicated on search results pages so they always know the privacy status of their searches.

“AskEraser is a great solution for those looking for an additional level of privacy when they search online,” said Jim Lanzone, CEO of Ask.com. “Anonymous user data can be very useful to enhance search products for all users, and we’re committed to being open and transparent about how such information is used. But we also understand that there are some who are interested in new tools that will help protect their privacy further, and we will give them that control on Ask.com.”

Ask.com engaged in discussions with privacy advocates at the Washington-based Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) as part of the process of developing an approach that gives users the ability to better control their search experience.

“We’re extremely pleased to see a new breed of innovative, competitive tools that allow users greater control over their personal information and online experiences,” said CDT Deputy Director Ari Schwartz. “With today’s announcement, Ask.com has taken an important step toward giving Internet users choice in how they control sensitive information about their online activities.”

With the announcement of AskEraser, Ask.com becomes the only major search engine to commit to giving consumers the control to prevent retention of their search history at the time of their search. AskEraser is expected to be deployed on Ask.com in the U.S. and U.K. by the end of the year, and globally early next year.

In conjunction with the release of AskEraser, Ask.com will also globally implement a new data retention standard that will completely disassociate search history from a user’s IP address or cookie information after 18 months.

July 20th, 2007