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SEO and Technology News Wrap Up: Week of 10/01-10/05
Target.com faces discrimination lawsuit, Yahoo announces search engine overhaul, number of cyber insurance policy holders on the rise
October 1, 2007—Yahoo Inc announced this week that enhancements made to its search engine will increase the speed of searches and produce improved, more accurate search results.
According to a report from Coputerworld.com, Yahoo’s new Search assist feature includes additional suggested search topics on the main results page, along with a list of correlated concepts designed to help users explore an unfamiliar subject area.
“We did this to avoid a common complaint about assistance technologies on other search engines,” says Tim Mayer, a member of Yahoo’s search development team. “That search engine suggestions are added to the results page whether or not a user wants or needs them.”
Update
Reactions to this update have been positive, and promoters of the universal search feature, including Yahoo senior vice president and general manager Vish Makhijani, remain optimistic. “Obviously we have our eye on being No. 1 in search,” Makhijani told Dow Jones Newswires, “We’ll chip away. This was the first step. We’ll take shots, take chances.”
Are You Cyber Insured?
October 4, 2007—Cyber insurance, also known as information security, e-business security, and other related names, is a policy that covers virus attacks, hacked computers, copyright infringement, Web content liability, and other technology related areas, according to MSN.com, and the number of policy holders in the United States is growing.
It is estimated that some 30% of businesses currently have a cyber insurance policy in place, and this increase in policy holders comes at the same time as a sharp increase in the number of claims filed by companies for denial of service attacks, virus attacks, and related issues.
“Small businesses in particular should spend some time researching cyber insurance,” said Rober Parsi, senior vice president of AIG, in an interview with MSN.com “That’s because they are so often at the mercy of third parties. Small businesses often rely on someone else to host their Web sites, track inventory, or authorize credit card purchases. They generally have no control over those systems reliability and maintenance.”
Update
According to the National Fraud Center, Intellectual property theft, defined as trademark infringement cyber squatters, trade-secret theft and copyright infringement has cost American businesses upwards of $250 billion a year from intellectual property theft since the mid 1990s.
Target.com Lawsuit Ruled Valid by Court
Anti discrimination suit may open up the floodgates for similar cases, experts say
A federal court judge ruled this week that Target.com must become accessible to blind persons under California laws. This ruling comes after a lawsuit filed last year alleging that the Target.com site, owned by the retailer Target Corp, did not make the site accessible to the blind.
In a class action lawsuit filed by the California National Federation of the Blind and on behalf of blind college student Bruce BJ Sexton, it is alleged that the Target.com site violates the Americans with Disabilities Act as well as two California Civil Statutes. ADA laws require Web retail sites to offer features that enable blind site users to shop in a physical store.
Experts predict that this suit, if won, will lead to the influx of similar lawsuits.
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