Huge news for the beaten down FWHT stock, which was recently down to 4.07 from it's 52 week high of 23.94, gained about 10% on the day.

A judge declared a mistrial in a patent infringement lawsuit between Yahoo Inc. and FindWhat.com Inc. after a jury failed to reach a decision on all of the issues in the case, FindWhat.com said on Thursday.

In a note to clients on Wednesday, RBC Capital Markets analyst Jordan Rohan said the most likely outcome of the case would be a modest out-of-court settlement. He estimated that FindWhat could settle the case for around $7 million to $8 million.

Rohan said some investors had worried that a ruling against FindWhat in the case could wipe out the majority of the company's $50 million cash balance.

Most of the second tier search stocks are fading into irrelevance. Maybe this will help FWHT hang on a little longer. Also noted eariler today:

FindWhat.com noted the judge has yet to rule on the issue of whether the patent is unenforceable because of inequitable conduct committed by Overture. A hearing on the inequitable conduct issue and other motions that could impact the ultimate outcome of the case is currently scheduled for June 24, 2005.

Keyword Locator is new keyword research & monitoring software which sells for $87. When I tried to download it there were download errors, but Frenchie Sano was quick to reply and help me with the download. On to the reveiw... Features:

• Like many of the other current keyword research tools on the market, it pulls keyword suggestions, search volumes, and bid prices from Overture.

• Set which Google URL and Overture market you want to review ads from, and reports the number of competing ads.
• Select Yahoo!, Google, Overture, or digging to grab your various keywords.
• Easy data import and export.
• Shows the number of competing ads in each engine.
• Allows you to filter keywords by a term or select a group of them. After you select a set of results you can scroll through the URLs, ad titles, common words in ad copy, and bid prices by search engine. (please note Google AdWords does not give out ad price and search volume data).
• By collecting and sorting the combined keyword data you can see what terms & emotional triggers people are using most frequently in your marketplace.
• Has a character stripper and ad formatter. The character stripper could also be improved by letting you also remove character sequences by doing something like placing the phrase or character set in [] or something like that.
• Tool also includes FindWhat & Enhance Interactive.
• Can access data via proxy.
• The format tool makes it easy for you to format keywords as exact match terms, phrases, or broad match terms. It would be nice if they added an all feature to that for those who may want to bid on all levels of relevancy matching.

Things that would Make Keyword Locator Better:
Many people access keyword data from the same sources. This means:

• this data is going to be inclined to being spammed or thrown off course by automated bots and marketers.

• These portions of the market are going to be much more competitive (and thus less profitable) than words from sources of unique or limited data.
• Outside of good sex and choice narcotics almost nothing feels better than being the only bidder for a term which converts at 30% and only costs a nickel a click.

I like free access to data and information (I only sell my ebook because it is my main functional business model and I have not been creative enough to think of another yet), but sometimes paying for data creates a barrier which adds value to the usefulness of the data. It would be cool to see a tool like this interface with data from WordTracker, Keyword Intelligence, & Keyword Discovery.

I think Keyword Locator could also be improved by adding:

• a term combination tool (like the permutator)

• a misspelled terms tool
• allowing users to set custom term operations. for example, I should be able to enter www.blah.com and output the terms:
  • blahcom

  • wwwblah
  • etc
• Interface with or link to other common keyword tools & ideas such as:
  • a thesaurus

  • Statistically Improbable Phrases
  • a lexical database

Overall Keyword Locator is pretty good software, but a few of the ideas listed above could make it a bit better.

If you spend signifincantly on PPC advertising it can likely help save you time and money, but some things can't be automated. Tools which show you what your competitors are already doing may not show you how to beat them (as you can't put think creatively into software).

Keyword Locator can help you as one tool to use with PPC campaigns, but you may also want to use other tools and research databases & techniques as well.

[Update: a WMW thread highlighted a potential problem with Keyword Locator]

Left, Right, Or Center? Can A Search Engine Be Biased?

Biased Search Ads:
Ads are going to be inherently biased, as paying for them means that the person buying them aims to use that money to manipulate others to perform a desired task.

From time to time someone will go too far and search engines will say the ad is out of bounds. The process will repeat.

Are Search Results Biased? Working with a Limited Information Pool:
Lets presume that the search engines aimed to be completely unbiased. Search engines can only display information they know about. They can not serve up information that does not exist.

Creating Information:
Information creation is either a labor of love, or must pay for itself.

Ideally it does not happen, but if a site creates profit the business model is going to bias the content.

If information is a labor of love then it is probably going to be highly opinionated - showing the world from a biased perspective.

If you pour yourself into something at a financial loss hopefully you are gaining in other areas, or else why would you create it?

While the best answers are usually somewhere in the middle, it is much more exciting to propose something that is cutting edge or deeply rooted in some ideology.

Linking to Information:
People are more inclined to link into overtly biased information. Whether they like the person:

Some might think ABC is a bit out there, but this is just a briliant idea (link)...

or hate them:

XYZ is a real tool. This moron said "blah blah blah" (link)...

Political and religious related topics are going to come out with a higher ratio of biased to unbiased information. Stories where religion and politics overlap will build heavy linkage data.

In being somewhat biased people get more feedback (potentiall more content), more readers (can make more money from ads and thus can further the content creation, brand, and distribution), and more links (furthering their authority score). Using the results of this type of social network how could search engines be anything but biased?

Credible Sources:
The Wall Street Journal is branded as honest information about business and finance in a capitalistic society, and yet they are reporting bad quarters and shrinking some of their edition sizes to cut costs.

Do the people reporting about money not know how to make any?

Part of the bad quarters may be due to

• the slugish stock market

• rapid consolidation of wealth
• uncertainty
• trade and federal deficits
• lack of trust in the market
• and energy shortages.

They are also losing out due to the web being a faster moving and cheaper distributed advertising network. Another thing that really hurts them - and all unbiased trusted sources - is that I can read exactly what I want to from whatever channels I like. News biased the way I like it.

While news search algorithms can use systems like TrustRank to unbias their news results, you can't fully remove bias from search results.

Most people are not cited or remembered as social significant for being unbiased and centered. The channels (websites) which do not have to ask for citation (links) will usually beat out those that do.

Privacy:
Google Web Accelerator takes your data, and shares it with others?

Block Google Accelerator:
courtesy Fantomaster

Click Fraud:
search engines leave advertisers in the cold lurch. Lurch is a cool word.

Block that Channel:
Google AdSense allows channel blocking

Stop:
Collaborate and listen, Ice is back with his brand new edition SEO Inc, being cool like Vanilla Ice, sends out a cease and desist letter.

New SEO Tool:
SEO Browser

Audio Search:Sounds like Yahoo! may be first to market

A while ago someone shot me an email about Constant Content and I forgot to post about it. I just remembered it again and thought to post on it.

From their site:

Constant Content is exactly what the name implies: A website where you will be able to find text to complete your website or project. This is a place to locate high-quality content at affordable prices. We will assist you in delivering the whole package, ensuring that the clients you service will be receiving a polished piece of perfection.

I have not bought or tested the content quality, but with the wide range of authors there is likely to be some real gems and some real duds in the mix.

Business model:
Constant Content is a database which keeps 50% of the funds received when people purchase the content created by authors who submit their articles to the site.

Some of the articles are free, while others are available for sale to use exclusively or to buy an individual license for. Constant Content also runs AdSense on some of their article abstracts to help create another revenue channel.

They already have over 600 writers, and it seems like it would be a fairly scalable business model, and is a rather untapped market.

Economics of Link Buying VS Submitting Articles:
If you buy them, even crap links can usually cost $5 to $50 each. You could likely buy one of these exclusive articles and submit it to a few sites to build a dozen or so links for the cost of one link.

Economics of Buying Ads VS Buying Content & Selling Ads:
To further appreciate the economics of this idea, a single click from Google AdWords on legal, health, insurance, and other high margin subjects can cost $2-$50, while you can buy the rights to an article for about $5 - $10 (usage) and $50 for exclusive rights.

As this and other related business models develop it sure can put another spin on the AdSense business model. With some of these articles you could buy them, place AdSense ads on them to get a 30% CTR, and after a few dozen visitors you would pay for the usage cost and be into the pure profit zone.

Similar Competing Business Models:
I believe the people at Traffic Logic / Article Insider also sell content. I doubt they could compete on the price aspect with how cheap some of the articles at Constant Content are. I also have found much of the Article Insider content to be a bit less than impressive.

Some auctions such as Elance allow you to bid on similar projects, but its hard to be certain of quality. The nice thing about Constant Content is you can request articles and bid without obligation to buy, even if a half dozen people make articles for you.

Disclaimer:
I don't think I know who is behind Constant Content. The post was fairly positive because it sounds like a cool idea. Whether or not it pans out, the business model seems smart to me.