Smarter Launches Visual Search

Seems that just last week I mentioned a shopping comparison engine launching a color search feature. Well, this week it’s Smarter’s turn to take the colorful spotlight.

Smarter.com today launched visual search. Visual search can be found by clicking on the Clothing & Accessories tab or by searching for any product within that section. Right now it’s is a bit hidden as the consumer has to click on a small link under the header.

Differentiator here is that Smarter’s visual search is all about clothing. Users select gender, then a top (shirt, sweater, etc.), then a bottom (pants, shorts, etc.), then choose the color for each. Smarter then returns two bands of products (the top on top, the bottom on the bottom) so users can see what the shirt and shorts might look like together.

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Ask.com’s Revenue Increases 62 Percent

IAC posted Q3 earning results, and part of that included results for Ask.com. Bloomberg reports that Ask.com’s revenue increased 62-percent but at a cost of $2.1 million. The $2.1 million more than doubled from their previous operating cost.

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New Conference: “Elite Retreat” With ShoeMoney & SEOBook

ShoeMoney, aka Jeremy Schoemaker, has informed me of an event he is co-running named Elite Retreat. The two-day event is will cover topics on SEO, Monetization, Arbitrage, SEM, PPC, and Blogging. The event is open to a maximum of 35 people in San Antonio on December 18th and 19th. Jeremy, Aaron Wall (SEO Book), Dave Taylor, Lee Dodd and Andrea Schoemaker will be the individuals running the conference. The agenda is posted here and it looks pretty exciting.

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SideStep Buys TravelPost

SideStep acquired TravelPost for a combination of cash and stock. TravelPost will become a wholly owned subsidiary of SideStep.

According to the press release, “TravelPost.com has grown into a leading source for unbiased user-generated hotel reviews and ratings, travel news, information resources and travel blogs. The company has excelled at organizing travel information to improve the way people research and shop for travel.”

TravelPost, with over 500,000 hotel reviews on its site, might be the smartest little travel site you’ve never heard of. The coolest feature is the ability to filter hotel reviews by Age, Gender, Budget, and Trip Purpose. TravelPost requires the reviewer to enter demographic information before posting.

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Google Asks Microsoft To Give Users A Choice

Forbes reports that Google meet with the European Union the other day about antitrust issues. They asked Microsoft to give users a choice when selecting their default Internet search engine. The article explains, “Google refused to say if changes Microsoft has already made to its upcoming operating system, Vista, have gone far enough.” You may also want to read Danny’s long write up on the release of IE7 and search engine default battle.

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Google Click Fraud Settlement Payments Received

I reported this morning that Google Advertisers Receiving Settlement Payouts for the refunds they were rewarded based on the Google Click Fraud Settlement. The amounts of those payments are making many advertisers feel like they were ripped off. For example, one advertiser informed us that they paid Google over $480,000 over the past three years and only received a credit of $280. You can check to see if you received a credit by viewing your “Billing Summary” under each campaign in your Google AdWords account.

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New adCenter Blog & adCenter Lab Features

There is a new location for the adCenter blog, it is now at http://adcenterblog.spaces.live.com/ (yea, the whole live.com thing). Also, adCenter labs released updates for some of the tools.

• Search Funnel 1.5: This demo will be updated with over 4 million keywords added to the database.
• Keyword Forecast: This new demo will display a search term’s impression count forecast and demographic predictions in any format: flash, picture or text.

I have screen captures of the Keyword Forecast at the Search Engine Roundtable – pretty neat stuff.

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Google Buys Wiki Maker, JotSpot

The Google Blog announced that they have bought JotSpot, a Wiki maker software solution. JotSpot updated their site to include an FAQ on Google, while Google has turned off signup for the service and locked it down to invite only. You can sign up for JotSpot at the www.jot.com, luckily, I am already signed up with them. Gary Price explains that the “financials are NOT being disclosed.”

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