We actually first mentioned the Google-Monarch connection last month, so this isn’t an it-just-happened announcement.  But companies are always optimistic when they first partner, and now that Monarch has had time to do some testing, the airline has announced the results.

“The introduction of the Google search engine has reduced inbound email by an extra 30% since launch at the start of November,” Monarch stated.  “Customers emailing flyMonarch.com are provided with relevant results to their question before they submit their query, enabling them to answer their own questions without having to contact the airline.”

Pretty impressive, eh?  Especially once you start to wonder whether there were some people who, in the past, failed to find answers or contact the airline, and simply looked up another way to travel.

Monarch Airlines may be unfamiliar to most Americans, but it is, by the way, no small potato.  Wikipedia dubs Monarch “one of the United Kingdom’s largest charter airlines.”

Information now available through the search engine includes reports regarding water and waste permitting through the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s Web site as well as information on individual schools using the Florida Department of Education’s Web site.

Sounds a lot like Google Custom Search–something Florida surely could have set-up itself.

"Every day, millions of people turn to search engines to find the authoritative and trustworthy information provided by their government, and it is our mission to help them connect with this content," said Elliot Schrage, vice president of global communications and public affairs at Google, in a press release. "Florida has joined a growing circle of states that are taking a significant step to make their online information and services more accessible to their citizens."

It’s not the first state to get a custom search engine, California, Michigan, and Arizona are among the others that have previously partnered with the search engine.

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Google’s Custom Search is available in two flavors: “free” and “Business Edition.”  While a cynic might expect the Business Edition to spread just a little bit faster, the expansion has affected both versions equally.  Also, a cynic who’s not familiar with the software might think this is one of Google’s less-important programs, but that’s not exactly the case.

“The UK Parliament uses CSBE on its website to make nine million documents easily accessible to the public,” note Nitin Mangtani and Rajat Mukherjee on the Official Google Blog.  “Monarch Airlines is using CSBE to help manage the growing number of customer enquiries about hand baggage regulations and the increased focus on airline security. . . .  A leading Serbian media system B92, which includes both a TV and radio station and a leading web portal, B92.net, offers Custom Search on various sections of its site, such as sport, business, culture and technology.”  And the list goes on.

This development, then, is something that a lot of people are likely to appreciate.  Look for more news to emerge along these lines, though – 80 countries is an impressive tally, but by most counts, there are 192 in the world.

If you have a blog that focuses on particular subject matter, inclusion of useful links and other features like these custom search engines can help to build loyalty and return visits. But, for webmasters who build local guides for small communities, Swickis are also an ideal way to rapidly provide robust, location-specific search functionality.

Over time, I’ve looked at a lot of small community guides, and many of the people who create them are masters of finding free widgets to provide functionality for things like weather forecasts, news headlines, and local events. But, many of these sites are missing even simple search functionality to help users find the local info on their site as well as elsewhere on the internet.

For instance, check out these small town websites for: Milan, Tennessee; Monterey, California; and Fredericksburg, Texas. Each one of these sites seem to be something less than comprehensive guides for their areas, and each could benefit from having a search engine to provide a route into more info about their areas.

Eurekster is perfect for this sort of thing — check out the search engine portal I whipped-up there for Milan, Tennessee in just about five minutes:

The rectangular widget that the service provides includes a search form box along with a “buzzcloud” of keyword links to top items you select to hot-link right into the search results. The interfaces are easily customizable in look and feel, and you can set up a few different search ads to run in the results pages, if you’ve signed up with those services to do so.

Here’s another cool example local swicki that someone created as a Seattle search engine.

So, if you need a quick, local search engine, Eurekster is definitely the way to go.

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I want to be able to segment RSS readers, to be able to see the different browsing behavior of new visitors versus my loyal visitors.

Getting to the point where I actually can acquire that data has been a pretty long ride. I first had to create a way to change the URL’s used in RSS feeds, so I could detect this different URL, 301 redirect it to the right URL, and set a cookie while doing that. To do that I filed a bug in WordPress’ Trac, which I wrote a fix for as well, someone else improved on it, and it was committed into the WordPress core. As of WordPress 2.3, you can apply a filter to the_permalink_rss, which allows me to add ?source=rss to any URL (or &source=rss when the blog uses the default ?p= permalinks).

The next step is detecting that parameter in the URL, and 301 redirecting to the original post URL. Before doing that 301 redirect however, I drop a cookie, which lasts for 30 days, identifying the user as an RSS reader. This allows me to, in the last step, add the following code to the Google Analytics script tag when the user has that cookie:

__utmSetVar("RSS");

I will know if this works tomorrow, and if it does, I’ll release a new version of my Google Analytics for WordPress plugin with this possibility in it. Since I can imagine other people want to identify RSS readers for other purposes, I’ll release that small bit of code as a single plugin as well.

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“[N]ow you can use any image on the web for your placemarks,” explains Keith Golden, a Google Maps software engineer, on the Google LatLong Blog.  “Just click on the new ‘Add an icon’ link in the icon menu, type the URL into the dialog box, and you’re good to go.”

Golden goes on to give an example involving a turkey, writing, “I typed in http://google.com/mapfiles/turkey.png to get my majestic bird.”  Right.  Well, turkey farmers and Ben Franklin fans might appreciate the image, anyway.

But for those who feel like displaying something entirely new, Golden continues, “You can also make up your own icons.  Although many image formats will work, PNGs with transparent backgrounds look best on the map.  Another idea is to use photo thumbnails.”  This might work out quite well, really, when creating directions to and from people’s houses.

And that’s about all there is to this story.  The development is just a small improvement, but it should make Google Maps easier (and more fun) to use.

About.com has been selling custom branded sponsored content for about a year. This WSJ page hawking Accenture is a PageRank 4, and this BizJournals lead generation page is also an indication of where sponsored content hosting is heading. How long will it be before you can log on to the WSJ ad platform and just buy a topic and upload a page?

A few months back Threadwatch had a post about Yahoo selling subdomains. Yesterday I stumbled across an AdSense ad for a company selling subdomains that they forward to other sites. I don’t believe it is smart to build a big site on someone else’s domain, but if you wanted to fling up a bunch of spam or create a single targeted ad page that goes after a competitive phrase why not leech of their authority and let them assume the risks?

There are no search engine guidelines on hosting advertisements for third parties because it is not an idea Google wants people thinking about or talking publicly about, and they can’t edit out WSJ.com if they will want the WSJ to spread their public relations messages and business interests.

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Before I give you my opinion, remember that I work for a competing product, IBM’s OmniFind search engine. So take my views with a pillar of salt. But here goes, anyway.

For small sites with limited technical skills, it seems worthwhile. You can set up the colors of the interface to match your Web site with no programming experience, and you just need to know enough to drop a snippet of code in the right place on your Web page. There’s no server to set up, so even sites with shared hosting can play. There are also free choices, such as Rollyo, that do a good job, but with less control over the appearance.

If you have some technical skills, however, there may be better choices. Even those folks saddled with shared servers can use a free Yahoo! API to give themselves a hosted site search. It’s worth remembering the drawbacks of a hosted search service, however. You can’t ensure that all of your pages will be spidered and you can’t ensure they will be spidered quickly as they change.

If you follow the tips in our book and in the Skinflint’s Guide to Search Marketing, you can ensure that most, if not all of your pages are spidered into that search index. And you can use Sitemaps to give yourself some control over how frequently the spider visits. It’s not the same as having your own search engine, though. If you want more control, you probably need to go a step further.

If you have dedicated hosting or own your own server, you can consider IBM’s OmniFind Yahoo! Edition, a free search engine (plug, plug). You must be savvy enough to be able to administer a server, but if you can, you get a free search engine that you have total control over. And it tops out at 500,000 pages, not 5,000 (or $500 a year for up to 50,000 pages from Google).

Google’s new offering seems valuable for those with small sites and no technical skills. Site search keeps getting easier and cheaper for site owners—what’s your site search like?

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At a forum at Digital point forum discussing the topic Jaybong writes:

“The older blogger version used to add "noindex,nofollow" by default to the template, i meant the default template. If you continue using that there your site is not indexed and followed by google bot. That blog is continuing to use that template and they didnt remove the code. Does that explain now? i hope so. Why google is doing this? Simple google doesnt want to pass any special PR juice to other website coz it will then be against the fair policy. Anyone featured on google will automatically get the PR. If you know some Pr 10 sites have PR disabled, means they cant transfer any PR e.g statcounter. Hope that helps everyone in understanding why google doesnt like to pass any PR juice from their own blogs."

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Yahoo Alpha Goes Beta

It’s new, it’s pastel blue, it’s Web 2…dot 0. It’s Yahoo Alpha (beta), ha ha.

Until Amit Agarwal posted the news about Yahoo Alpha at Digital Inspiration, the project was running quietly for users in Australia and New Zealand on Yahoo!7, a partnership between Yahoo and the Seven Network.

As module-based pages go (think Netvibes, Pageflakes, Google Personalized Home) Yahoo Alpha presents a much more economical design. Base choices for content modules on Alpha offer results from web or news search, Flickr, and Yahoo!7 Answers.

They also go off-Yahoo property by making YouTube and Wikipedia results available in modules; users can also choose to have Sponsored Results, a module of paid search advertising, as part of Alpha. An option for custom modules permits users to set up blocks of content drawn from other websites.

Agarwal guessed the Sponsored Results block could be a hint that Yahoo may match Google’s Custom Search Engine by sharing advertising revenue with Alpha’s users.

A search for Tori Amos on Alpha, with the Flickr and YouTube modules open, brings web, photo, and video search results for the artist to the front of the page.

While search is at the core of Alpha’s usefulness, it appears to be just part of the equation. People can create an instant personalized search, with a variety of content from inside and outside Yahoo, on any topic.

Alpha isn’t the first product to do this, but if Yahoo chooses to push Alpha globally in conjunction with their very popular Answers product, it might make a good cornerstone for Yahoo to finally build a social networking strategy on, with all of the pieces they have acquired over the past couple of years.