Once upon a time in the summer of 2005, rumors swirled that Microsoft planned to purchase Claria, once known and heartily reviled in its Gator incarnation. Steve Ballmer’s M&A had a $500 million check prepared for the purchase, so the reports said.

A palpable outcry seemed to deter Microsoft from the purchase. Complaints about Microsoft quietly downgrading the way its anti-spyware product rated Claria software and the general public griping about bringing the company aboard the Redmond mothership appeared to scuttle the deal. The rumors melted away.

Then a curious story about a Microsoft trademark filing emerged. The mysterious blogger Thomas Hawk posted speculation in late February 2006 that the trademark filing could indicate Microsoft and Claria were working together on something called Relerank.

The Relerank name is awfully close to RelevancyRank. So close that it was a little surprising the sounds of Gulfstream jets full of attorneys and paperwork should have been heard departing from the airport nearest Claria’s Redwood City, CA, headquarters to deliver their lethal legal payloads at Bill Gates’ doorstep.

It didn’t happen. Much like Conan Doyle’s curious incident of the dog in the night-time, not a peep was heard from Claria about what looked like an infringement.

This brings us to current day. Claria has sworn off adware, MediaPost reported, and is working with Deutsche Bank Securities to sell off products it bundles with adware. They plan to be out of the adware business by the end of June.

The end of June. Something else happens then, too. Microsoft’s long-running deal with Yahoo’s Overture unit for online advertising ends, to be replaced by MSN adCenter.

Just a coincidence? Let’s look at the last paragraph of the MediaPost article:

Perhaps they found one in the form of Microsoft, with its Windows Live Toolbar and MSN Messenger client. Claria gets bought out, its venture capital backers cash out, and RelevancyRank becomes Microsoft Relerank.

And everyone lives happily ever after. The end.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Claria Eyes Search Industry

[Hat tip to SE Watch for the story, reminder sent in SE Report #105. Read about RelevancyRank]

The demonstration shows that MSN, Yahoo, and Google don’t rank a lot of highly relevant sites (as far as Claria and its advertisers are concerned) in the top ten. For those scoring at home, Yahoo “won” on the sample query, by a score of 50 to 40 (Google) to 18 (MSN). Not too surprising given the strong business relationship between Yahoo and Claria!

Maybe the “failure” of search engines to rank behaviorally-compelling sites as high as Claria does isn’t the point, though. On one hand, site quality can definitely be measured by some recipe of indicators based on fuller analytics, such as time spent on site, etc. On the other, certain metrics (such as commerce-related ones) might not be the best ranking criteria.

Probably, a fair comparison would also point to which paid ads are ranking high on the top three search destinations, also, since part of the point of organic search is to show users sites that are deemed to be “about something” and not just “about buying.”

Still, it is a promising salvo by Claria, especially if most of the indicators are based simply on metrics like repeat visits, click rates, and time spent.

Back when Direct Hit came out, that was the sort of thing it intended to measure, and some of us thought it could vie for supremacy or at least wind up in the top four or so search engines. Unfortunately it had no good way of doing what it set out to do, and after being acquired by Ask Jeeves, its methodology got folded into the overall search mix.

Because all the search engines intend to deepen their use of behavioral analysis, Claria’s take on search may not be as novel as it first appears. Google can follow user behavior in several ways: through the toolbar, through AdSense code, and through Google Conversion Tracker and Urchin installations. Finally, it now has personalized search with search history, and the idea of Google “accounts,” meaning as long as you’re logged into some element of the Google network, they can gather info about your search habits and what you click on for certain queries. If you wind up on sites that also contain Google code, or if you have the toolbar installed, they can gather considerable behavioral data, in theory.

Google, though, doesn’t gear its whole algorithm to these behavioral indicators, as Claria proposes to do. This leaves a hole in search as far as Google’s concerned. For users who would rather see sites that conform to Claria’s idea of quality, there is no way to isolate on that element of the Google algo to allow those “behavioral quality indicators” to gain more weight. The one-algo-fits-all system (in spite of mild personalization initiatives to date) is potentially going to feel quite constraining to power users, and eventually, to mainstream searchers.

What that confirms for me is that a “bake your own algorithm” search engine will someday do very well, and this will be spurred on by various competing takes on search such as Claria’s, Yahoo’s My Web, and other upstarts who will potentially remind the public that there is more than one view of what counts as “relevancy.” The idea that every so often, a Dance is done to create a new centralized edict about what constitutes the best formula for ranking pages on a given keyword query, is beginning to feel stale.

I think Google’s days as the Pope of Search are numbered, if the innovations coming down the pike from elsewhere — be they behaviorally-driven, peer-to-peer, or something else entirely — are anything to go on. Big G will have to adapt.

Andrew Goodman is Principal of Page Zero Media, a marketing consultancy which focuses on maximizing clients’ paid search marketing campaigns.

In 1999 Andrew co-founded Traffick.com, an acclaimed “guide to portals” which foresaw the rise of trends such as paid search and semantic analysis.

The behavioral marketing company is planning on introducing its Vista Marketing Services search platform, which will make use of the company’s RelevancyRank search technology to determine their search result ranking.

According to the about page, RelevancyRank provides Claria with the following:

It goes beyond analyzing links to pages and hypertext matching, and instead evaluates what searchers do once they see the links displayed.

The technology analyzes what happens after a search results page is displayed, incorporating metrics such as the location of each listing on the results page, click rate, and post-click consumer behavior – such as time spent viewing a site, number of pages viewed at a site, and number of return visits to a destination Web site.

Claria believes the RelevancyRank technology can filter out irrelevant results by focusing on the information other searchers have found useful.

In Claria’s press release, the company indicates the alpha version of their upcoming search engine should be available in July of this year. This version will be password protected and limited to a small test group, with a full Beta release coming in the fourth quarter of 2005.

Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest search news.

But, glad to see the anti-rumor rumor or something like that. Now we can get back to our normal games of guessing just what Longhorn will look like when it ships and other important questions like that.

On his blog, Ed says that if anyone actually was considering a Claria deal that they should be locked in a room until they realize what a stupid, stupid, stupid idea this was (he used three stupids).

No comment. I might be stupid but I’m not THAT stupid!

Link: Microsoft/Claria Deal Dead

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Robert Scoble is the founder of the Scobleizer blog. He works as PodTech.net’s Vice President of Media Development.

Go to Scobleizer …

Microsoft says its change in the default recommendation for Claria products detected by its AntiSpyware beta product is “fair and consistent with how Windows AntiSpyware (Beta) handles similar software from other vendors.”

Claria submitted a request to Microsoft in January requesting its products be reevaluated. That request was honored by the end of March. Though Microsoft says its AntiSpyware tool will still remove Claria products it detects, the software now recommends Claria products be ignored instead of quarantined.

Sunbelt Software president Alex Eckelberry confirmed Microsoft’s contentions as to the detection and removal functions of the AntiSpyware product, but questions why the default action was changed to “ignore” instead of the previously recommended “quarantine,” or even “remove.”

“The heart of the problem is philosophy. Why is Claria any different than Hotbar (which is still listed a default action of “Quarantine”). And why is Claria being put into an “Ignore” status in the first place?” asks Mr. Eckelberry.

Microsoft hasn’t answered those questions, but the company has reaffirmed its commitment to spyware protection in its letter to consumers on the Claria issue. “All software is reviewed under the same objective criteria, detection policies, and analysis process. Absolutely no exceptions were made for Claria,” Microsoft said in the letter.

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.

To recap: Microsoft, back on March 31, downgraded the severity of Claria’s spyware apps, a major mistake in my opinion. C|Net then reports on June 20 that Microsoft is in talks to aquire Claria. Then, ten days ago, Sunbelt reports that one of their researchers, Eric Howes, discovered the March change in status to Claria apps.

So, Boing Boing reports that Microsoft has already bought Claria, and has proceeded to downgrade Claria’s apps. Problems? Lets count them:

1. Microsoft didn’t buy Claria. Still hasn’t.
2. Microsoft didn’t just downgrade the apps. It was months ago.
3. Microsoft didn’t downgrade just Claria’s apps. Sunbelt reported on Friday
   that downgrades were issued to apps like WhenU, WebHancer and Ezula
   Toptext. So, it has nothing to do with Claria, and everything to do
   with a strange (and probably innacurate) grading system.

Boing Boing did not issue a correction. They issued what passes for an “edit” at Boing Boing, which is reposting the article with an update that says “MSFT acquiring spyware firm”, which is still inaccurate (its still “in talks”, according to The New York Times), and they don’t mention that the changes occured months ago. They had to be aware that the changes happened a while ago, after all, I emailed a correction to them!

Worse, because instead of correcting the article, Boing Boing reposted a version of it, the original version is still there, holding more backlinks than the correction because it was first. Bloglines reports 21 citations for the original, 9 for the slightly corrected but still incorrect version.

Boing Boing appears to have a very irresponsible and inactive corrections policy, refusing to remove incorrect stories and not seeking out the facts when it has gotten them wrong. Based on reports in various places in the media, I easily knew the story well before Boing Boing reported it, so why didn’t Boing Boing get the message. It is things like this that make Boing Boing look more like a “fun blog” and ineffective as a news source.

Does Boing Boing have fact checker, or an experienced news editor on staff? I realize it is a blog, but as one of the top blogs in the world, pulling in 2-3 million hits a day and earning a lot in ad dollars, they have a responsibility to hire someone to catch stuff like this and fix it before they embarrass themselves.

(via The Blog Herald > Findory)

Reader Comments…

Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

Visit the InsideGoogle blog.

Here’s one place I agree with my brother (and we don’t agree on much, you should come to one of our gettogethers and listen to the arguing).

There are lots of ways to compete in the marketplace. I’m not sure of the facts here, but with Technorati, Feedster, Pubsub out there I can’t believe we’d spend money on something that’d bring us so much negative PR.

Link: Microsoft about to buy into a BIG mistake

Robert Scoble is the founder of the Scobleizer blog. He works as PodTech.net’s Vice President of Media Development.

Go to Scobleizer …

Redmond is in talks to buy Claria, the company that is behind the adware program Gator, which has been criticized for its actions in serving unwanted pop-ups and tracking Web usage. ”

Hello, people ! Time to wake up !

“According to press reports, the most recent offer by Microsoft was $500 million; however, the negotiations may break off before a deal can be made. There are fears that such a deal may send the wrong message to consumers, as Microsoft’s own anti-spyware program detects Claria software as “high risk” and recommends deletion.”

“However, others at Microsoft see the acquisition as a way to clean up the adware industry by taking out one of its biggest offenders and using the technology in more acceptable ways.”

Read more on [BetaNews] about this

C|Net reported about Claria on february 14th :

Claria “[] is launching a new marketing division and advertising service to migrate from hawking its signature pop-up advertisements to selling behaviorally targeted display ads. If it has its way, the ads will appear on publisher pages across the Web, reaching as many as 200 million people. To address the privacy implications of such an ambitious service, Claria has also hired a team of experts to ensure it meets industry and consumer clearances. Claria plans to announce partners and introduce the service, called BehaviorLink, in April.”

[] Quoting [myself on May 6th] :

“So you’re only being submitted to behavioral advertisement if you’re using some sort of software (often freeware) that has ties with GAIN.
Still, that market is estimated on 40 million users and BehaviorLink has set its target to expand the market to 200 million users by engaging in partnerships with as many small software and tool providers as possible.”

Concluding :

If Microsoft plays this card right, MSN might have some serious competition up its sleeve with a technology that can easily compete with the Adsense programs that are running on Google or Yahoo.

Microsoft has, if the takeover’s for real, A LOT of consumer information too, since Claria, previously known as Gator, specializes in collecting this.

Related posts on Coolz0r :

TAKING ON A $6 BILLION MARKET WITH BEHAVIORAL ADVERTISING

HOW GOOGLE TURNED TO BEHAVIORAL MARKETING

WHENU IS LEGAL

Reader Comments…

Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

Visit the InsideGoogle blog.