Legal Marketing & SEO Blog

FCC 700 MHz Band Auction
Auction ID: 73
Accepted Applications
(Sorted by Applicant)
Date of Report: 12/18/2007 01:13 PM ET
The following applicants have an Initial filing phase status of "Accepted."

Of course, Google Airwaves, Inc. is the one bidder that is attracting all the attention. A number of other companies are interested as well.

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Google Maps now offers real-time traffic conditions via a Traffic text button. This button may be found in the upper right-hand corner of the map where the other buttons are located for alternating between the Map, Satellite and Hybrid views.

Here's the secret algorithm for decoding the colors:

• Green: more than 50 miles per hour
• Yellow: 25 - 50 miles per hour
• Red: less than 25 miles per hour
• Gray: no data currently available

Previously, I looked up traffic conditions at 511.org. While 511.org does provide more detailed accident information, I found the site to be slow. Do I really need to see an animated "retrieving data" image to remind me how poky the site was? Also, after Google introduced draggable maps, the click to re-center the map interface just seemed downright primitive. And, sites that adhered to that interface were telling me that they had stopped innovating.

Glad to see Google add another welcome feature to an already solid product. If you want your clients to be able to check out traffic conditions before they head out the door to your office, consider adding a link to your law firm from Google Maps. It just might save them some time.

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This one surprised me a bit. I thought drunk driving would be the most popular search term, but DUI beats out both DWI and drunk driving. I didn't realize how ingrained these acronyms were within our vocabulary.

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How do you describe your practice areas on your law firm website or blog? One way would be to carryover the phrases your firm had successfully used in a magazine or yellow pages ad. When I flipped through the Valley Yellow Pages today, I noticed that the personal injury attorney ads exclusively used the term auto. In print, auto accident, car accident or vehicle accident may all be used interchangeably. Someone seeking a lawyer that handles car accidents will recognize that a law firm that handles auto accidents will work just fine.

However, the online world is different. Someone searching for a lawyer that handles car accidents won't necessarily find your law firm website or blog if you only mention that you handle auto accidents.

Just take a look at the search volume for various search terms using Google Trends. Car accident far outpaces auto accident or vehicle accident, and understandably so. In our daily conversation, we simply do not use the term auto. For one week, try replacing the word "car" with the word "auto" and see what happens.

"Whose auto are we going to take?"

"Can I drive your auto to school today?"

So, while automobiles or motor vehicles may be broader and more encompassing terms, cars is how we like to call them.

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Hi Friends,

Google has bought the Menlo Park garage that Larry and Sergey started their company in.

             Google Garage - Menlo Park, California

Here are some other nearby garages....

Apple Garage - Los Altos, California

HP Garage - Palo Alto, California...

... where a lot of this started.

Peace - Tim

:: Under the Bridge, Blood Sugar Sex Magik by the Red Hot Chili Peppers

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Hi Friends,

Another day, more free Google stuff. Google today formally released their free hosted domain services for business (you can read the press release and the Wall Street Journal Article). It includes email and Website tools for your domain, as well as a calendar and chat services. We were in the beta last May for testing Google's GMail for our Justice.PRO domain and it has worked well. We got a 100 2GB justice.pro email accounts for the great price of .... FREE :).

The new free service Google has just added is a Web site development tool for your domain. This is similar to their Google Pages application, but now you can use your own domain for your site. We made a business site for Little Sheba and Rio Bravo. Links to t-shirts and mugs will be included later this week :)

You can visit Sheba's and Rio's site by visiting Peace.Justice.PRO

Stacy and I did a presentation at the National Bar Association a few weeks ago on free marketing services, and will start posting that information in the next few days, contrasting in particular Microsoft's Office Live offerings with those from Google.

Peace - Tim

:: Beautiful, The Forgotten Arm by Aimee Mann

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Today, at its second annual Press Day, Google unveiled Google Trends, the latest project to percolate from Google Labs. While I am always interested in the new products coming out of Google, this latest one has me really excited. And, once I show you how Google Trends can impact your law practice, I hope you will share my excitement as well.

First, let's take a look at the Google Trends home page. Right below the Google logo is the familiar search box. To view the charts for different search terms, enter each of the terms separated by a comma in the search box and click on the Search Trends button.

First, let's say you are a personal injury lawyer who handles asbestos cases. Two keywords that you would probably be interested in is asbestosis and mesothelioma. So, you type these two terms into Google Trends and retrieve the Asbestosis versus Mesothelioma traffic chart.

The legend indicates that the blue line maps the asbestosis traffic and the red line maps the mesothelioma traffic. The top graph charts search volume, while the bottom graph charts news volume. In addition, Google has plotted how news stories have impacted the search volume.

Google Trends also identifies the location where most of the searches for these two terms are originating—Charleston. If you want to refine your search (instead of all years and all regions), you can limit the results to come from a specific month or year and a specific country.

Let's run a different search. Here's the Vioxx, Celebrex and Bextra traffic chart. As you can see, the search volume for the three NSAIDs look approximately the same. However, each of the NSAIDs have an event-driven pop in traffic, with the one for Vioxx being the largest. This occurred when Merck withdrew Vioxx from the market.

To get a more detailed view, I limited the trend history to 2006. In this graph, you can see that there were more searches for Celebrex (red), than Vioxx (blue) or Bextra (Orange), even though the news volume for Vioxx was the greatest.

Let's look at one more graph. For those that practice family law, how should you describe your practice on your web site? Are you a divorce lawyer? A divorce attorney? A family law attorney? A family law lawyer?

The trend history shows that divorce attorney (red) edges divorce lawyer (blue) by a slight margin. And both of them are searched more frequently than either family law attorney (orange) and family law lawyer (green).

If we look at the statistics on a regional basis, we can variances in search volume by location. So, the chart first shows us that there are a lot of people in Minneapolis looking for a divorce, and these Minnesotans are searching for a divorce attorney more frequently than a divorce lawyer. However, if you look at New Yorkers, they are searching for a divorce lawyer more frequently than a divorce attorney. So, depending on the location of your family law practice, you may want to optimize your web site for divorce lawyer instead of divorce attorney.

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Hi Friends,

Google came has come out with a mini version of their Google Mini. The new version indexes 50,000 documents and costs $1,995. It is very easy to setup, and if you need to upgrade the number of documents you are indexing , you can just purchase an upgrade license and enter in a new license key (like Justia did recently :). Google has a Google Mini product tour online and list of the 200+ file formats the Google Mini indexes.

For law firms, I would recommend using a Google Mini for the full text search of their Web site if it has 1,000 or more pages of content and for their intranet to search previous legal research (to find old briefs etc...). The key value to us was the ease of setup and quality of search results.

You can read more about our use of the Google Mini in our previous posts: about the Google Mini and our use of it for the US Supreme Court Decisions full text search.

Peace - Tim

:: Freewill, Permanent Waves by Rush

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Hi Friends,

Google came out with their free Web sites (Google Pages) last week. I was playing around with it (see Sheba's GooglePages Web Site) and it seems pretty nice. The Page Creator is page by page focused, and your subdomain (tstanley.GooglePages.com) will be based on your Google Gmail address (tstanley at gmail.com) leading to possible spam.

Natalie Jost has a nice run through and tutorial on using Google Pages on her own Google Pages Web site NatalieJost.GooglePages.com. Anyway check out Natalie's GooglePages site, it is excellent.

More free stuff from Google... always good.

Peace - Tim

And of course law firms can make free law firm focused Web sites at freedom.justia.com (for an example see Antony Cermanaro's business law site).

:: Coast to Coast PodCast, from the Legal Talk Network

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Lately, Google has been involved in a lot of lawsuits: book publishers, DOJ subpoena, Microsoft, France....

However, last month, in a novel twist, a plaintiff, Mark Anderson, convinced the Beverly Hills Small Claims Court to direct Google to remove a number of documents that mention him from the Google index, including newspaper articles and public documents such as a U.S. Bankruptcy Court order.

Specifically, the Court ordered Google to remove "all references to [1 individual and 3 companies] from the Google search engines and search results." This is not the removal of the documents from the Internet, just from the Google search results. Attached to the order was an exhibit listing the Web pages to be removed from the Google index. Chilling Effects has posted the court order and exhibit on its Web site.

Here are some of the sites that had their pages removed from the Google SERPs, per the California small claims court order.

Global Water Technologies > News. A quick look at Google's cache shows that this page is not in their index. On a practical level, the removal may not represent that significant a development since the latest news release posted on this page is from November 10, 2004. However, as a theoretical matter, if a plaintiff can convince a court to order Google to remove a third party company's press release page from its index, the potential for harm is significant, in terms of investor relations and marketing. This also raises the question whether any of the third party Web sites were notified that their pages would be removed from the Google index. If not, a company's Web site could be de-indexed and they may not even know about it.

DefaultRisk.com > 2nd Qtr 2003. DefaultRisk.com bills itself as a resource for managers of credit risk measurement and modeling. The offending portion on this page is an 85 word summary of a bankruptcy filing. The summary was factual in nature and did not include editorial comments on the parties or the merits of the bankruptcy filing. Again, a cache of this page is missing from the Google index.

Denver Business Journal > Global Water Technologies files Chapter 11. This one is even more amazing! An article from a reputable business newspaper vanishes from Google's index. If you read the article, it too is factual in nature.

U.S. Bankruptcy Court - District of Colorado > In re: Global Water Technologies, Inc. If removing a business newspaper's Web page from the Google index amazed me, then removing a United States Bankruptcy Court order from the Google SERPs absolutely shocked me. The usual reasons for removing a page from the Google index probably involve trademark or copyright issues. But, here, none of these issues should exist with a court order. We've all heard of opinions being depublished, but de-indexed? Think about that. A state small claims court de-indexes a federal bankruptcy court's order. We wonder whether the plaintiff will sue the US Federal Courts to compel them to remove the document from their site as well.

EDGAR Online > Secured Term Promissory Note. This promissory note was an exhibit to a Form 8-K filing. In other words, an ordinary business contract. But, the note involved a "Company Who Must Not Be Named," so it too was removed from Google's SERPs.

So, having verified that these Web pages are not in the Google index, let's take a look at the other two search engines. I ran a search query on Yahoo! using the first set of terms listed in the exhibit to the court order. Surprisingly, on the first page, three of the above Web pages were listed, including those from Global Water Technologies, DefaultRisk.com, and the U.S. Bankruptcy Court - District of Colorado. So, it appears that Yahoo! escaped unscathed for now.

Next, I ran the same search on MSN. Interestingly, the first result was the court order and exhibit on Chilling Effects. However, none of the five results mentioned in the Google analysis above appeared on the first page. I did spot the Web page from DefaultRisk.com on page 3 of MSN's results. To test whether MSN had removed certain pages from its listings or whether MSN was just using a different algorithm, I ran some additional search queries.

When I search for "He Who Must Not Be Named" on the Global Water Technologies domain, MSN tells me, "We couldn't find any results." The same search for news on that domain yields GWT - In the News, which is one of the pages stricken from the Google index. This shows that the Web page was not removed from the MSN index. However, why wasn't this Web page returned as a match for my earlier search? Looking at the cache reveals that the individual's name does appear on that page. And, if I run a search for George Kast, another name that appears on that news page, MSN does return that page as a matching result. So, it appears that while MSN has not removed that Web page from its index, all the words on that page are not fully indexed either.

Since my earlier MSN searches were inconclusive, I ran another test. This time, I searched for one of the company names on the U.S. Bankruptcy Court - District of Colorado's Web site. The court order appeared as the lone match. So, that didn't clear things up a bit. If MSN is removing results from its SERPs, I hope that it would adopt Google's practice of notifying users that certain results have been removed pursuant to a legal request and adding a hyperlink to the request on Chilling Effects. That way, MSN users will know whether to try another search engine to see if more complete results are available.

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The San Jose Mercury News reported that the Feds have subpoenaed Google in a bid to obtain their search records. In an act reminiscent of certain countries in "Old Europe," Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL all surrendered, leaving Google to fight it alone.

Here are copies of the motions. I've OCR'd them so that they are searchable and copy-and-pasteable.

• Notice of Motion, and Motion to Compel Compliance with Subpoena Duces Tecum
• Declaration of Joel McElvain
• Notice of FIling of Declaration of Philip B. Stark, Ph.D.

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Google recently published the inaugural issue of Google's Newsletter for Librarians. While the newsletter was conceived at the 2005 ALA (American Library Association) conference and is targeted at librarians, the information contained within the newsletter is equally applicable to lawyers or law firms with web sites.

In the newsletter, Google engineer Matt Cutts offers a primer on how Google crawls and indexes the web and then ranks the search results.

The title tag appears at the top of your browser window and should be a keyword-rich description of the contents of that web page. You can also find additional SEO (search engine optimization) tips and resources at Justia's SEO Center.

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Slow week at the courthouse. A lot of empty chairs in the jury assembly room. Thankfully, the court provided cubicles and free wireless internet access for people to do their work while waiting.

Anyways, today was my big day. As I was walking to the courthouse, I noticed several people distributing handouts, including one person who was offering an informational pamphlet entitled What You Need to Know About Talking to the Police. Although this isn't a high tech approach to legal marketing, it does offer a lesson for the online world.

Finding Your Target Audience. Why would a lawyer hire someone to distribute a pamphlet in front of a courthouse? Because the lawyer who authored the pamphlet realized that just writing an informational pamphlet alone is not enough. Only by distributing his pamphlet in a location flush with potential clients can the attorney use the pamphlet to convert a targeted audience of people with court business into paying clients.

Likewise, in the online world, just having a web site is not enough. You need your web site to be visible to your potential clients. What's the online equivalent of the front of the courthouse? Google. That's where potential clients start their searches and that's where law firms need to be. So, like the lawyer who hands out informational pamphlets outside the courthouse, law firms need to make sure that they are "handing out" copies of their web site on Google. If a potential client searches for san jose bankruptcy lawyer, then law firms with bankruptcy practices in that location must have their law firm web site listing appear at the top of the search engine results page for those keywords. Otherwise, that's like leaving your well-written informational pamphlet on your credenza at work. You can take a certain pride that you've assembled a fantastic pamphlet which is loaded with smart advice, but it certainly won't help you develop any clients if no one is reading it.

So, think of your law firm web site as your informational pamphlet and search engine optimization as the guy handing out your brochure. You need to both working together hand-in-hand to make your law firm web site a successful client development tool.

Here's a photo of the courthouse as I was leaving. (The jury panel on which I was sitting was excused.) As you can see, the line wasn't that long at that time. However, earlier in the morning, there was quite a wait. It wasn't until I reached the front of the line that I saw a sign indicating that attorneys, as officers of the court, may proceed to the front of the line upon presenting their bar membership card. I'll keep that in mind the next time.

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Hi Friends,

Google's Urchin is now Google Analytics and... it is free! We have been using Urchin stats for ourselves, and our clients, even before the Urchin team was a part of Google, and it is Good. Now everyone can use it on their Web site (or client Web sites!).

Any way, I am retagging up our Web site tonight with the hosted Urchin Google Analytics code and will post some notes about it at a later date. I wonder what other kewl new (or old :) free stuff good Google will do in the future...

Peace - Tim

:: Route, Trace by Son Volt

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Hi Friends,

We just got a brand new 1U blue boxed Google Mini for full text indexing of a new database we are setting up. It took about an hour to get it out of the box, install and index our content set (although we are doing some extra work fixing up our search result templates and scripts to make the output real nice and pretty).

More on our content set later... for now, please enjoy some pictures of Little Sheba the Hug Pug and her newest bestest Google toy.

And a few Google Mini notes: The Google Mini is very easy to install - open box, turn on, set IP addresses, select URL to index, click mouse, check indexing status. If you want your own machine with Google search software to index 100,000 documents for only $2999... visit the Google Mini Site... and be sure to read the Google Mini Legal Services Success Stories or other industry Google Mini success stories. We hope to be one ourselves some day :)

Peace - Tim & Sheba

:: Wanna Be Your Dog, Back to the Noise by Iggy & The Stooges

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Earlier this week, Google unveiled its latest enhancements to Google Video, a searchable collection of online video content.

My favorite new feature is that Google Video now enables users to view videos online without downloading any Google software - specifically Windows-only software. So, Macintosh users can now watch videos - including the pilot of Everybody Hates Chris - on Google Video using Firefox or Safari.

Are there any marketing possibilities for lawyers using Google Video? Well, it appears that some law firms are already exploring this area. A search for mesothelioma returned informational videos from two law firms as the top results.

For now, the number of videos in Google's collection remains low, meaning that it will certainly be easier to rank higher for the search term mesothelioma in the Google Video search results than in the regular Google web search results. We'll have to see whether law firms will adopt online video advertising in the same manner that they have embraced TV advertising.

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Searching for a law-oriented web log (or "blog") is not a straight-forward process. The standard search engines offer a number of different ways to locate a blog, which we will compare with the new Google Blog Search that came out today.

To show you how to track down a blog, let's continue from yesterday's post on the Supreme Court. I'll run a number of searches for blogs on the Supreme Court and compare the results.

Google / Yahoo! / MSN - Supreme Court Blog

First, I ran a search for supreme court blog on Google, Yahoo! and MSN. The two top contenders among the search results are SCOTUSblog and Supreme Court Blog.

I've summarized the results in the table below.

SCOTUSblog ranked higher on Google, while Supreme Court Blog ranked higher on Yahoo! and MSN. However, when reviewing the two web sites, I noticed that the posts on SCOTUSblog, which is sponsored by Goldstein & Howe, P.C., were more up-to-date and relevant. SCOTUSblog is currently covering the nomination hearings of Chief Justice nominee John Roberts, Jr.

Supreme Court Blog, on the other hand, includes only 2 posts from 2005, both on Supreme Court figurines and bobbleheads. The blog does include more substantive commentary, but these are from October of 2004. Overall, not quite befitting its #1 ranking on Yahoo! and MSN.

Google - RSS Search

Next, I ran a search for supreme court but limited the results to rss feeds by adding filetype:rss to the search term. The theory behind this is that blogs often offer an rss feed of their posts. However, the results from this search were not particularly fruitful.

MSN - Feed Search

MSN also offers a feed search. To specify a feed search, I added feed: before my search term (e.g., feed:"supreme court"). As you can see below, MSN returned a mix of news feeds and blog feeds.

Google - Blog Search

Finally, I tested Google's recently unveiled Google Blog Search.

I ran a search for supreme court using Google Blog Search. As you can see from these results, Google Blog Search returns blog postings that match your search terms. You can also sort these results by relevance and by date. So, if you are looking for a blog on a particular topic, stick with the regular Google search. If you are looking for a blog posting on a particular topic, try out the new Google Blog Search.

A few notes about the Google Blog Search from Tim

1. You can find Google Blog Search at http://blogsearch.google.com or for those who would like a blogger look and feel the url is: http://search.blogger.com/

2. There is a Google Blog Search FAQ here: http://www.google.com/help/about_blogsearch.html
3. Google Blog Search only searches the feeds, not the sites
   
   If you want your full post indexed, you need to setup an RSS 2.0 or ATOM feed with the full post text (this is relatively easy to do, although many Blawgers are not currently doing it)//
4. You can Ping your Blog post to Google using current services
   
   If you want Google Blog Search to index your blog make sure to ping weblogs.com or blo.gs. You can set this up in your software, or
   
   you can do it manually (or by way of a bookmark that is reloaded) at http://pingomatic.com/
   
   and note: you can also automatically use pingomatic.com, which pings a bunch of sites, by adding in http://rpc.pingomatic.com/ as a URL to ping in your blog software
5. Not Just Blogs are Indexed Google Blog Search actually indexes more than blogs, it also indexes RSS and ATOM feeds from news papers and any other site that is updated regularly (eg non-blogs like http://auto-recalls.justia.com :).
6. Read more information about Google's Google Blog Search at Search Engine Watch or the Google Blog, or just do a Google Blog Search on "Google Blog Search".

Posted In Blogs , Google , MSN Search , Yahoo! Search

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Last year, Google announced that it was launching a preview release of Gmail, its supercharged seach-based webmail product with 1 Gig of free storage. This, in turn, probably lead Yahoo to unveil its "New and Improved" Yahoo! Mail service with increased storage space shortly thereafter.

Initially, Gmail was only open to a select group of users. However, Google recently opened up Gmail accounts to US mobile phone users. If you don't have a mobile phone, you can still open a Gmail account the old-fashioned way — find a friend who has a Gmail account and request an invitation.

From the Gmail Home Page, you will find a Sign up for Gmail using your mobile phone link. Clicking on that link takes you to a sign-up page where you have to enter your mobile phone number as well as the computer-generated characters displayed on that page.

Once you've received your invitation code, enter it in the next screen.

Since its preview launch, Gmail has increased its storage limitation to 2.5 GB. By comparison, a free Yahoo! Mail account has a 1 GB limit and a free Hotmail account has a 250 MB limit.

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Last week, Google announced an opt-out policy for publishers who do not want copies of their books included in Google Print as well as a temporary suspension to their scanning of books still in copyright. For those who are unfamiliar with Google's latest offering, let me offer an introduction.

When you enter a library or a bookstore, how do you find a book? If you know the specific book you are looking for, then the task is simple. Just head to the computer terminal and look up the location of the book by author or by title.

If you are just interested in a book on a particular subject, the task is more challenging. Of course, you can search for a book by subject or keyword; however, short of browsing through a number of books, you cannot immediately tell how in-depth a particular book will cover the specific topic you are interested in. The book may devote an entire chapter to the topic or just offer a sentence or two in passing.

This is where Google Print steps in. Google Print is a project between Google, several major libraries and publishers under which Google will scan books and make them full-text searchable from Google. From the Google Print home page, you should recognize the familiar Google interface.

For today's demo, I'm going to see what different people have written about our friends at the OYEZ Project, which provides online audio recordings of U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments. I enter oyez project into the search field and clicked on the Search Print button. This takes me to a results page with thumbnails of the book covers, the book title, author and a short excerpt where the search term was found.

When I click on the first title, The Complete Idiot's Guide to teh Supreme Court, I'm prompted by a sign-in interface. You will need a Google Account to view the scanned pages from the book. After I signed in, Google Print then displays the scanned page where the search terms appear and highlights the search terms. There are two arrows at the top of the page that lets you browse through a couple of the surrounding pages.

I see Google Print as a great reference source for research projects. This may also be a competitive intelligence tool for seeing who has mentioned your law firm or the competition. A word of caution though. Google Print does include a number of books that allow full-text searches, but does not permit the user to view the scanned pages containing the search results. In such an instance, I'm not sure why Google bothers to include these books in the search results since the restricted results are of such limited use. If Google can scan all the books from a law library, this will be a major boon to research attorneys.

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Lately, Google and Yahoo have been unveiling competing products in a battle for Internet users. After one company unveils a new offering, the other will often come out with a similar product shortly thereafter. Well, it appears that Microsoft is looking to join into the fray - and I'm not talking about the dueling lawsuits between Microsoft and Google over Kai-Fu Lee.

The latest battleground involves satellite maps with Microsoft releasing a beta version of MSN Virtual Earth over the weekend. I really like the overlay of street names and landmarks over these images.

To no surprise, Google Maps now offers this feature as well. I'm not sure who was first and who was second, but congrats to both. In Google, the hybrid button triggers the overlay of the map onto the satellite image.

The big difference between the two images - besides the fact that one is in black and white and the other is in color - is that although both maps include a label for the Bellagio Hotel and Casino, only one of them actually displays the Bellagio. Considering that the Bellagio opened in 1998, that should give you a hint of the vintage of Microsoft's satellite images. So, if you are leaving for Las Vegas, stick with Google for now.

However, MSN Virtual Earth isn't without its merits. For selected locations within featured cities (that's just a polite way of saying for isolated localities), Microsoft offers much higher resolution images. Here's a view of the World Bank in Washington, D.C., home of Paul Wolfowitz.

In Google Maps, the degree of resolution is much lower. Did you notice that both maps identify which streets are one-way?

Google takes first place by a wide margin. Google Maps feature fresher satellite images and higher resolution images for more areas, including international destinations. MSN Virtual Earth takes second place. However, it should really be called Virtual USA and not Virtual Earth. For selected cities, Microsoft offers higher resolution images. However, these images are not available for many parts of the USA. Also, because Microsoft relies on the US Geological Survey for its images, the Virtual Earth feature doesn't includes close-up satellite images of Europe, Asia or even Canada. Still, I imagine this is just a first step for Microsoft and that it will spend its way to bringing forward a more competitive product in the future. As for Yahoo, I'm surprised that they hasn't upgraded their maps to be competitive with Google and now Microsoft. That may just be a timing issue. We'll have to wait and see.

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In honor of the first manned Moon landing, Google presents Google Moon, a version of the Google Maps interface that plots the Apollo moon landing sites on a photo image of the moon.

You can zoom in and zoom out, but if you look too closely, you'll discover that the moon is made of cheese. ;-)

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Hi Friends,

Google has released a beta of its tool bar for Firefox... and it works on the Mac version of Firefox (as well Windows). Right on time too :)

The Google Toolbar for Firefox! -- Some more competition for Yahoo!'s Toolbar for Firefox (or just use both)

Google also released some other Firefox extensions, including a Google Send to Phone for sending text messages of Web page content to a phone number (I think this one is sponsored by the phone companies...) and an extentsion for using Google Suggest in the Firefox search box (it gives suggestions of using the stem text your entered (see previous post).

Here is the Google Blog post about the Firefox toolbar. I am sure there will be more browser search tools, some of which will work even closer with Google Desktop... in the near future.

Peace - Tim

:: Search & Destroy, Nude & Rude - The Best of Iggy Pop by Iggy Pop

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Do your clients have difficulty finding your law firm? A few years ago, just listing your street address may have been enough. Then, businesses started offering links to MapQuest or screen captures from Yahoo! Maps. And, that was help.

Well, Google unveiled the lastest upgrade in maps by allowing you to embed Google Maps on your own web site through the Google Maps API. This is a fully-functional version that lets you zoom in and zoom out, drag the map in any direction you want, switch between street map and satellite views, and also create your own custom icon — whether that's your law firm logo, an image of your building, or even your company puppy.

You can now offer clients looking for your law firm 360 degree views including nearby landmarks to help them find their way.

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A few months ago, Tim Stanley blogged on the incorporation of satellite images into Google maps. (See Google adds Satellite Images to Google Maps). At the time, these satellite images were just a local feature – local to Americans, that is. Well, Google has gone global so now you may be able to find 360 degree views of all your law firm offices whether they are located in the Bay State or in Beijing.

Here's a photo of Beijing with Tiananmen Square in the center. A lot of law firms are located in Oriental Plaza, which is just down the street.

Of course, finding popular landmarks is more fun than finding law firm offices overseas. Here are links to the Eiffel Tower and Guantanamo Bay.

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Google proudly displays the number of web pages contained within its index. At 8 billion pages and counting, this potentially represents an immense quantity of useful information. Indeed, Google is well suited for finding all sorts of arcane trivia tucked into the many recesses of the web.

However, web researchers already recognize that the quantity of data is only one factor. If the information you are searching for is not within one of the 8 billion pages in Google's index, you're out of luck.

For example, let's look at securities filings. Google surprisingly returns Canada's SEDAR as the first result (gasp!) and the SEC's EDGAR as the second result. Sacre bleu! Despite French protestations, it turns out that the Internet really is a tool for foisting Canadian (and not American) values and culture onto the world. :-)

All kidding aside, while Google will point you to the SEC's web site, this only represents a first albeit incomplete step since the contents of the securities filings are not included in the Google index. This is true even though these securities filings are freely accessible online and are not sequestered in a password-protected section of the web site. So, you cannot search for every mention of a particular executive within a company's securities filings through Google. However, the fault for this omission lies with the SEC and not with Google, Yahoo or MSN. For some reason, the SEC has set-up a robots.txt file to hide securities filings and other files from search engines. Unfortunately, this effectively banishes securities filings to the Deep Web. So, on one hand, the SEC promotes the disclosure of important corporate data to investors; however, on the other hand, the SEC itself hides the disclosures it receives from the search engines - the usual way people go about finding information.

That's why when I searched for berkshire hathaway securities filings, Google returned the copies from Hoover's Online, and the SEC's own copies are no where to be found. Unfortunately, Hoover's also blocks search engines from indexing the contents of its securities filings as well. So, Google can tell you that Hoover's Online has a copy of Berkshire Hathaway's securities filings, but cannot tell you what is inside them.

As a result, researchers have to go through the circuitous route of looking through each individual securities filing to track down the information they need or pay one of the subscription services which offers the ability to conduct full-text searches of securities filings. For those only interested in material contracts, Onecle has extracted thousands of business contracts from securities filings and these are all freely accessible, as well as searchable from Google.

In other search engine news, this week, Yahoo! announced Yahoo! Search Subscriptions - a new service for searching through subscription content. While Yahoo! Search Subscriptions is currently only configured to search through Consumer Reports, Forrester Research, FT.com, IEEE, the New England Journal of Medicine, TheStreet.com and the Wall Street Journal right now, Yahoo! states that its search engine will add Lexis-Nexis and other subscription content at a later time. Let's see how well this new service works so far by using three different approaches to locate Kozlowski in the Wall Street Journal.

Using Google, a search for Kozlowski on the Wall Street Journal site returns 6 results.

If I run the same search using Yahoo! Search Subscriptions, I get 20 matching results. Interestingly, if I ran a search for Kozlowski using the regular Yahoo! Search instead of Yahoo! Search Subscriptions, I only get back 2 matching results from the Wall Street Journal.

The final test is running a search for Kozlowski on the Wall Street Journal site itself. And the winner is...the Wall Street Journal with 120 matching results. This shows you how much content still remains out-of-reach of the major search engines. Google may have over 8 billion web pages stored in its index, but it isn't omniscient (yet). Not by a long shot!

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Hi Friends,

Google released their (your) personalized Home Page today, allowing you to add your GMail subject lines, "personalized" Weather, Stocks, News and of course recent Slashdot posts.

Google's interface is nice (better than MyYahoo!) for moving things around or editing individual modules on your actual personalized Google home page.

The content choices are sparse. Stock, Weather and News - the basics. Google does not allow you to add in RSS or ATOM feeds (yet) like Ken's version of his MyYahoo! legal desk top from his legal competitive intelligence post. But just give Google time... :)

To a certain extent, the personalized Home Page can be seen as a way for Google to get local information about you for localized advertising. One more move into the Yellow Pages market by the number 1 Internet Company. Your zip code for the weather is really the key personalized information for localized ads, allowing Google to send local ads to your searches, just like Yahoo! does to MyYahoo! users (although Google is not currently using your weather zip code for that purpose... yet).

For law firms it is one more reason to update your local Google listing at the Google Local Business Center.

Here are the Google Blog posts on the new Personalized Home Page Post 1 | Post 2 and here is the link to the Google Personalized Home Page.

Peace - Tim

:: The Train Song, Hot Burritos! - The Flying Burrito Brothers Anthology 1969-1972 by The Flying Burrito Brothers

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Hi Friends,

Google today released "My Search History" which allows you to see your search history on Google, AND the links on the search results pages that you clicked on.

Above are my first few stored searches as shown on my "My Search History" page.

As you can see, Google stores your search history, and allows you to search your search history. Over time you will be able to view what you were searching for, as well as the link you clicked on for thousands of searches.

At some point, Google will use your search history information to give you the option of seeing new Google search results that are influenced by your previous search history.

Google's My Search History feature will be very useful to legal (and non-legal) researchers. I like it already!

Peace - Tim

:: Again Tonight, Whenever We Wanted by John Mellencamp

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Lately, I've been covering a lot of new product offerings by Google and today proves to be no exception. Google Video offers a world of potential for law firms and continuing legal education (CLE) providers looking to extend their reach online.

For estate planning law firms that provide live seminars to attract new clients, Google Video potentially offers them a means to educate a broader audience on the basics of wills, trusts and estate planning. So, instead of reaching only those clients who can attend a seminar at a pre-determined time and location, Google Video may enable law firms to reach any client at all times of the day.

For CLE providers who are not distributing their courses online, Google Video may allow them to sell their video seminars directly to attorneys. The Video Upload Program FAQ notes that you can charge any price for your video. However, if you do charge users to play your video, "Google will take a small revenue share to cover some of [its] costs," which the Google Video Upload Program Terms of Service discloses to be at least 30% of gross revenues.

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Yesterday, Google released two new services for mobile phone and wireless device users: Google Local and Google SMS Driving Directions.

Google first released Google Local last year to enable users to find relevant local information with neighborhood business listings, maps, directions, and useful web pages. Now, Google has extended this service to XHTML-enabled mobile phones, but with a cleaner interface. So, whether you are looking for pizza or Pintas in Chicago, Google will show you the way.

The search results for Google Local comes from a combination of Google's index of web pages and Yellow Pages data. If you cannot find your business in Google Local or your information is incorrect, the Google Local Business Center lets you list your law firm or update information about it on Google Local for free.

From the Google Local Business Center you can add a law firm description, they types of payment you take (cash, credit cards, check...), your hours of operation, your contact email and Web site address and the category Services-Attorneys

Once you sign up for updating your listing, Google will send a letter to the address you provided with a personal identification number and activation instructions, activate and Google will add your updated listing to the Google Local database to go live with the next update.

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Google Labs offers Google Suggest, one of the latest flavors of the popular Google search engine. This version pretty much looks and works like the regular Google with which everyone is familiar.

However, the twist in this version is that as you type in your search terms, Google displays a list of potential keyword matches along with the number of search results that will be returned. In the graphic below, a search for "vioxx" displayed related matches for "vioxx recall," "vioxx lawsuit," "vioxx lawyer," "vioxx litigation," "vioxx class action," "vioxx side effects," "vioxx attorney," "vioxx lawsuits," and "vioxx news." If you are looking for related keywords to optimize your site, Google Suggest offers a quick and easy list.

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Hi Friends,

Well like everyone else, I have decided to take a flight around the USA with Google Maps and post some pictures. But first check out Paul Rademacher's combination of Google Maps with Craig's List Apartment Rental Listings.

Now on to the photos....

Wrigley Field in Chicago

The Bellagio and Bellagio Fountains in Las Vegas

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Hi Friends,

Google added satellite images to their Google Maps. Now you can see where you are going from above, anywhere from a Space Shuttle View to a Helicopter view. Personally I find the Amazon A9 street view more useful, but the space-sky view is pretty neat. All of this work is about getting into the local advertising - online yellow pages market.

My puppy, Sheba the Hug Pug, and I took walking trip to see where the first commercially viable integrated circuit was invented by Bob Noyce and his team at Fairchild Semiconductor. But before we took our walk, we decided we would like to see what the building looked like... from above (an especially kewl view point for a Pug :).

Here is what 844 E. Charleston Rd. looks like from above on Google Maps.

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Hi Friends,

GMail turned 1 today. Google increased GMail's storage immediately to 1.5GB (for my accounts at least), with plans to increase to 2GB (as stated on CNET and others) and then... Infinity + 1GB (or at least... more).

In any case Google has again pulled ahead of Yahoo! in the "we offer more free space" marketing realm, - Yahoo! recently announced that Yahoo! Mail will increase its storage to 1 GB in the near future. Microsoft Hotmail continues with its "huge" 250MB of mail storage. (anyone still remember 4mb - 10mb mails boxes?).

Of course Google offers more than free Web mail. Each GMail account also comes with free Email forwarding as well as, POP access and SMTP sending for GMail. So you can configure GMail for POP and SMTP services for local computer clients, like Outlook, Eudora, Thunderbird, Apple Mail etc...

Personally I find the GMail POP/SMTP access more valuable than the increased storage (neither Yahoo! nor Microsoft are offering free POP/SMTP access).

And you can see your new GMail message titles in your news reader with an ATOM feed of your GMail account. And.... to see additional new features on GMail, visit the What's new on GMail. Visit this page often, as it seems to change about once a week.

And if you want your own GMail account, go to iSnoop.com, enter your current email address, and a GMail invite will be sent to you. Better hurry though, they only have 665,592 invites available to share.

UPDATE: I am now up to 2GB for my account, and... I tend to use my GMail accounts for all of the mailing lists I am subscribed to (eg Law-Lib, etc...). It is a nice place to have you own personal archive of the mailing lists (and, as noted, with GMail's POP access you can download them to your local machine as well)

Peace - Tim

:: I'm Afraid of Americans, Earthling by David Bowie with NIN

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Hi Friends,

A recent study of eye movement by search marketing firms Enquiro and Did-it and eye tracking firm Eyetools shows that......

1. Listings on the top of a search results page is viewed more than listings on the bottom of the Web page and

2. Being on the top of the editorial results or having a top AdWord placement is better than having a side AdWord placement.

This graphic shows the eye movement of a participant in the study.

The Key Findings:

Organic (non-paid / not Google AdWords) Ranking Visibility - shown in a percentage of participants looking at a listing in this location. These are NOT click through rates.

Rank 1 – 100%
Rank 2 – 100%
Rank 3 – 100%
Rank 4 – 85% (above the fold)
Rank 5 – 60% (below the fold)
Rank 6 – 50%
Rank 7 – 50%
Rank 8 – 30%
Rank 9 – 30%
Rank 10 – 20%

Top Sponsored Ad (Google AdWords) Visibility were seen by 80 to 100% of participants (which indicates that some top ads were not seen, and thus are not as valuable as a top placement from an organic result listing).

Side Sponsored Ad (Google AdWords) Visibility - shown in percentage of participants looking at an ad in this location Again, these are NOT click through rates.

1 – 50%
2 – 40%
3 – 30%
4 – 20%
5 – 10%
6 – 10%
7 – 10%
8 – 10%

Okay maybe this is obvious for eye movement on Google search results... but think about how this might apply to your own law firm Web site. In particular look at the graphic above, and notice that the Google header is ignored, and the user looks right at the content, and starts in the upper left of the screen, and then scans to other blocks of content, in this case there being one on the right. One starting place on Web site usability at UseIt.com (among numerous other places on the Web). A good usability book, which will soon be out in a second edition this summer, is Don't Make Me Think : A Common Sense Approach to the Web by Steve Krug.

Click here for the press release at Enquiro or Eyetools. And do a Google search on -- Google "Eye Movement" -- and you can find many discussions about the results of this study, positive and negative.

Great graphic!!! A good example about how to use a graphic to present information and get good pr. I am sure that this study has been a big win for all three companies.

Peace - Tim

:: Louisiana Rain, Damn the Torpedoes by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

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Hi Friends,

We are now on to free mailing lists. There are a number of places you can make a free mailing list, Google Groups, Yahoo! Groups (the former eGroups) and Topica are some of the better known ones.

All have their strengths and weaknesses, but for a one-way email newsletter or a conversation email list, Google Groups is the best.

With Google Groups you will have the ability to read the archive and post on the Web (just like a message board) . If you allow your posts to be "public" then the text message archive is included in the Google Groups archive of Usenet postings (this includes the former Deja News archive of the Usenet). The Google Groups Usernet archive is the most searched archive of Usenet postings on the Internet.

If you want to start a community with photos, file sharing and a calendar then Yahoo! Groups is pretty good. The downside of Yahoo! Groups is that there are sometimes banner ads on the pages, extra ad only pages when reading posts, and the interface is not as clean as Google Groups. MacLaw and Network-Lawyers are examples of popular legal mailing lists on Yahoo! Groups.

We at Justia use Google Groups for our announcement mailing list, justia-friends, to which we send out about 1-2 messages per month. You can join our announcement mailing list by filling the boxes below! :)

For updates on Justia's services, please subscribe to justia-friends. Thanks!
	Email:
	Browse Archives at groups-beta.google.com

So what do you need to do to create your own Google Groups mailing list in under 2 minutes???

Well first you visit Google Groups, then either sign-in or create a new account (you will need to verify your email addresses to create your new group).

To create the group, you click on the "Create new groups" link on the home page, enter a group name, group email address, group description, decide who can post, and who can read the posts, and then add members.

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Hi Friends,

So what is a blog, why should you blog, and where is the best place to get a free blog. Here are the answers:

Q: What is a blog?
A: A blog is a Web site that is made up of posts that are arranged chronologically, and are archived by date and category. [ Blogger Blog Definition | LexBlog's legal blog definition ]

Q: Why should you blog?
A: Blogging gives law firms an easy way to highlight news items and publish commentary on what is happening in the legal world. In addition, most blogs have news RSS and ATOM feeds that summarize their authors posts and are aggregated in new news feed search engines like Feedster and Technorati. News journalists are using these blog search engines to find sources and information for their stories (and stories are breaking on the blogs, such as the CBS news documents, and the Whitehouse reporter with the false name and... :). As many news stories concern law, blogs are a great way to get in front of reporters. Many established law firms are doing it, such as Preston Gates & Ellis and Stark & Stark.

Q: Where is the best place to get a free blog?
A: Google's Blogger is the best place to get a free blog. There are many other places for free blogs (eg LiveJournal - for teens with style or MSN Spaces - for teens without style), but Blogger has the cleanest interface, and is very easy to use.

You enter in your contact information, choose a subdomain, choose a template, and you are ready to post. You can take a tour of Blogger here.

Blogger allows you to FTP (or more ideally sFTP) your blog on your own servers or you can use their hosting service blogspot.com.

Blogger has a lot of information about the service online. Rather than repeat their tutorials and instructions, here are the links to information that will help you set up your own Blogger Blog.

• Blogger Tutorial
• Blogger Help - FAQs and support
• Blogger's Blog (Blogger Knowledge)
• About.com's Blogger articles and resources
• Molly Holzschlag has an online video on learning Blogger (part of it is online for free, the full video requires a subscription or you can purchase the CD ROM of the video for $29.95).

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Hi Friends,

Google has released a beta of the third version of their toolbar. It works for... Internet Explorer on Windows.

The Google Toolbar 3 has a SpellCheck for when you are inputing data into online Web forms...

It has a word translator - just hover your mouse cursor over an English word and Toolbar's WordTranslator will tell you what it means in your own language. WordTranslator currently supports translation from English into Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Japanese, Korean, French, Italian, German and Spanish.

Google Toolbar's AutoLink button will automatically create a link to an online map. AutoLink can also link package tracking numbers to delivery status, VIN numbers (US) to vehicle history, and publication ISBN numbers to Amazon.com listings (side note: watch the Amazon - Google relationship).

And of course all the good stuff from previous Google toolbars, Google PageRank, Popup Blocker etc... etc...

... when will there be an offical Google version come out for Firefox for the Mac...

Peace - Tim

This item - one more found by way of Gary Price on the Search Engine Watch.

:: Twice As Hard, Shake Your Money Maker by The Black Crowes

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Hi Friends,

Google held their first Analyst day on Wednesday. You can find the Webcast here. Gary Price has a good overivew of the media comments and mentions at the Search Engine Watch Blog. Look for a lot more personalization features - all lined up with local ads (for law firms :).

Peace - Tim

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Hi Friends,

As Google continues to focus on the local advertising market, it has now released Google Maps. The maps (which on the Macintosh work with Firefox, but not Safari) allows one to scroll along a given area, placing additional graphical elements onto the screen as one scrolls, rather than redrawing the whole screen to show the map.

Little Sheba the Hug Pug's Backyard Dog Park - Hoover Park

You can also get directions or do a local search (for lawyers or restaurants or auto body shops...) on the location shown in the map screen.

Overall the interface is clean. I am sure they will add some features to compete (defeat?) Yahoo!'s and MapQuest's maps. Maybe Google will combine the scrollable interface with an Amazon/A9 like street pictures and/or with Google's Keyhole technology. And then make it work with a Treo that has GPS and then... Competition and programming will eventually make this all happen :)

Here are some links:

Google Maps
Google Maps FAQ
Google Maps Tour

And here are usability comments from Gary Price (of ResourceShelf.com fame) on the Search Engine Watch blog.

Or just do a Google search on "Google Maps".

Peace - Tim

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Hi Friends,

I thought I would do a quick post on a few Google Resources. Not that there is really anything new here, just that Justia's blog is new, and we felt should have some posts of and links to the basics.

So here are some Google resources...

First is the Google Blog. It is used by Google to introduce new features of and changes to their site, such as today's post about Google adding the "Local" link to the Google home page for Google's Local Search.

The Google-Friends announcement list has (finally) moved to Google Groups from Yahoo! Groups*. In what can only be considered a blatant rip-off of the Google-friends list, Justia has also set up Justia-Friends at Google Groups as well. So please join the Justia list when you sign up for the Google list.

Google Guy - is an engineer at Google who posts on the various search engine discussion boards about Google's results and rankings among other things. Google Guy is really Matt Cutts [ pic ] a programmer at Google, but that may change, since he chose the moniker GoogleGuy rather than his own name so the person behind the name could be switched out with another programmer (maybe even a female programmer) at any time.

Read a summary of some of the things the Google Guy has stated on the discussion boards here.

Here are some non-Google Google resources, starting with two message boards worth checking out. The WebmasterWorld.com Google Forum and the SearchEngineWatch.com Google Forum

And here is Google Rankings, a tool to check your ranking in Google, which apparently has been okayed for doing such checks by Google's legal department. They have many other nice tools and scripts there that can be used in search engine optimizing your Web site (keyword density tools, Yahoo! Rankings... ). The site is certainly worth checking out.

And here is a paper on the Google prototype for historical purposes.

Well, the new news of this post is Google putting the Local search link on their home page. And since you read this far, then I will give you the key to doing well with Google's local search...have your full street address on all of your Web site pages.

Peace - Tim

And finally, visit Google Labs for the interesting public betas that have been released. The one I like is Google Site Flavored Search. Here is a law flavored search.
 

* Yahoo! Groups is the former eGroups (and OneList), which was originally Scott Hassan's FindMail before it was a commerical enterprise. Larry's brother Carl Page was one of the co-founders, along with multi-company co-founder (including FindLaw) Martin Roscheisen and, of course, the man with the original plan Scott.

Posted In Google , Online Yellow Pages , Search Engine Optimization

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Hi Friends,

Welcome to Justia's Legal SEO Blog. On this blog we will comment on the Internet and legal marketing industries, as well as introduce new Justia features and services.

We would like to thank Kevin O'Keefe of LexBlog for helping us set up our own Marketing Blog.

Have a great day!

Peace,

Tim

Posted In Google , Justia News , Lawyer Directories , MSN Search , Offline Legal Marketing , Online Yellow Pages , Search Engine Marketing , Search Engine Optimization , Web Directories , Web Site Design , Yahoo! Search

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