SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 3, 2008

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on
Search Engine Land and from other
places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

• 
  Yahoo Search March ’08 Weather Report
  Yahoo Search sent me a note that tomorrow they will be rolling out a new update. Yahoo made “some changes to their crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms,” Yahoo told me. The update is expected to be a quick one but you may notice “ranking changes and page shuffling in the…
• 
  Ask.com Calls Teoma Rumors False
  Friday I reported that IAC Ready To Drop Ask.com Search Technology & Partner With Google? based on an Silicon Valley Insider tip. Just an hour ago, I recevied an official statement from Ask.com saying the rumors are false. Nicholas Graham a spokesperson from Ask.com, told me: I wanted to get…
• 
  Danny Sullivan Tackles Search 3.0 and 4.0 in SMX West Keynote
  I thought I’d gracefully retired from the Danny Sullivan Keynote Review business. Comparing Danny to Edward R. Murrow, assessing how the attendance stretched the room capacity… ahh, they were good times. Then I awoke to find myself in a large hall at the Santa Clara Conference Center. It wasn’t…
• 
  Compete Sold For $75 Million To Taylor Nelson Sofres
  Andrew Girdwood found that Compete.com was purchased by Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS) for $75 million. TNS’s release explained Compete.com’s 2007 revenue was “$14.9 million, over 50 per cent higher than in the previous year.” TNS will pay in deferred cash payments throughout now and 2010, up to a maximum of…
• 
  InsideTrip Seeks To Add More Depth And Dimension To Travel Search
  Entering the already competitive and crowded market for travel search, InsideTrip is betting it’s bringing enough value to the market to gain consumer awareness and usage. The site offers a metasearch engine (like Kayak or Farechase) for airfares. But it also has compiled public data on a range of other…
• 
  comScore Paid Search Data & How The Sky Might Not Be Falling
  Last week comScore came out with a report that showed a 7% sequential decline vs. December 2007 in paid search ad clicks. Plus they showed an 8% drop in the number of clicks per Google searcher from December 2007. The report set shock-waves through Wall Street and caused the stock…
• 
  Mobile 411: A Leading Indicator For Mobile Search
  There are roughly 250 million cell phone users in the United States and more than ten times that figure around the globe. Approximately 42 million (or so) people use the “mobile Internet,” in the US, with varying degrees of frequency. The number of people texting constitutes at least 100…

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• How to Improve The Webmaster Tools Google Gadgets, SEOish
• Spammer Invades Google Calendar, Googlified
• Innovation comes cheap, says Google engineer Kevin Marks, News.com
• Google Talk, Not Dead After All, Google Operating System
• Microsoft Expands Online Services, Wall Street Journal
• AOL Plans A Dozen New Websites Within Next Six Months, paidContent.org
• Arrow indicators reveal who actually sent you email, Official Gmail Blog

Business Issues

• Why Google’s surprising paid click data are less surprising, comScore
• Alan’s Angle – Google Perfect Enough for Ask.com?, Marketing Pilgrim
• Ask.com not planning to scrap search: source, Reuters
• Google CEO Schmidt practices the art of stonewalling, News.com
• Google to ComScore: You owe us $15-billion, Mathewingram.com
• My stunted interview with Google’s Eric Schmidt, News.com
• Wall Street Doesn’t Get It (Part I), Traffick
• Who Wants to Sue Google?, Scott Hendison
• Grassroot Supports of Ask.com Giving Up? Ask.com Giving Up?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Microsoft’s supersized data center plans, News.com
• Microsoft: Google Is Our Only Competitor in Ad-Platform Game, Ad Age
• Video: Google CEO Eric Schmidt On Its Health Plans, paidContent.org
• Video Interview: Jimmy Wales Talks Wikia in Video Interview, ResourceShelf

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Out of this world maps, Google LatLong
• The No. 1 Thing I Learned at SMX West (about Local Search), Small Business SEM
• Live Orbit Tracker in Google Earth, Google Earth Blog
• Yelp’s CEO: A five-star rating for New York, News.com
• Google Earth showed protesters way to conquer parliament, Times Online

Link Building

• Dude, Where’s My Leap Link?, The Link Spiel
• Looking At Link Relationships, ShoeMoney
• Forget about anchor text start building trust, BlogStorm
• Bee’s Do It, Even NonProfits Do It. Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall In Link Love, The Link Spiel
• SEOs Can’t Agree on the Value of an Image Link, Search Engine Roundtable

Microhoo

• Exclusive! Interview With Yahoo Shareholder Who Supports (Different) Microsoft Deal, Silicon Alley Insider
• Tellme’s Tale As Microsoft Subsidiary, The Associated Press
• Yahoo to extend proxy slate deadline?, News.com
• Microsoft CEO Ballmer: Yahoo Offer Reasonable; "Alternatives Considered", paidContent.org

Paid Search & Contextual

• Google CTR Down Due To Click Area Changes, TechCrunch
• Google Adwords Certification – Is It That Important?, SEM Geek
• Google Health won’t have ads, Sify.com
• Google: The Hollow Echo of a Click, BusinessWeek
• Technorati To Launch Blogger Advertising Network, TechCrunch
• Contextual Advertising Best Practices: Banners and Video Ads, Search Engine Watch
• Feb ’08 Paid Search Market Share: Google Gains, Yahoo Loses, Economic Slowdown Not Observed, Rimm Kaufman
• Google Fixes New AdSense Terms of Service Bug?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Print Ads Running in 750 Newspapers, Yahoo Partners with 634 Newspapers, Search Engine Journal
• Negative Keywords Back in AdWords, Search Marketing Standard

Searching

• Greek search engine B i G (But it’s Greek), Alt Search Engines
• The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines, March 2008, Alt Search Engines
• IFRA Search – search engine for news publishing, Alt Search Engines
• Multiplied Adds Movie Search, Screenwerk
• One Really Annoying Search Result at Google, Small Business SEM

SEM Industry

• A Chat with Hakia’s CEO Dr. Riza C. Berkan, Alt Search Engines
• Googlers: The Biography, Bloggle
• Two New Mods, Two New Logos, A New Blog, Cre8PC
• Incisive Media’s Matt McGowan Chats with Eric Enge, Stone Temple
• 48 Practical Questions to Qualify Prospective Search Marketing Vendors, Search Engine Watch Blog
• Marissa Mayer in San Francisco Magazine, Google Blogoscoped
• Happy Anniversary, Me! Searchfest is Next Week, SEOmoz

SEO & SEM

• ‘Google Bomb’ an Enemy, Wired
• Should Google, Yahoo, Mahalo, etc. ban affiliate links? (or "Will the FTC ban undisclosed affiliate links for us all?"), Calacanis
• Trusting WordPress Plugins and "SEO for WordPress", John Andrews
• Google Traffic to Ungated NYTimes.com has Doubled, Report, Beet.TV
• Six Weird & Wacky Search Results Issues at Google, SEOmoz
• The Importance of Page Layout in SEO, SEO By The Sea
• Why Google Guidelines Sometimes Depart From Reality, SEO Book
• 302 in Google looks Bad again, DaveN
• Beginner and Comprehensive Guides to SEO, Link Building, PPC, Social Media, Affiliate Marketing and Blogging , The SEO Scoop
• Why Spam Google Groups?, JLH Design Blog
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) As Part Of A Larger Online Marketing Strategy, Vanessa Fox
• WordPress robots.txt tips against douplicate content, ShoeMoney

Social Media

• Learning from Political Social Media, Yahoo Publisher Network Blog
• Twitter In The Classroom, TechCrunch
• Twittermeter: Measuring Buzz in the Twittersphere, Read/Write Web
• Biographicon Wants To Be Wikipedia For The Non-Notable Masses, TechCrunch
• User-generated content, advertisers and suicide, E-Consultancy
• Building a Brand with Widgets, BusinessWeek

SMX Conference

• SMX West 2008: Barry Schwartz WebProNews Videos, WebProNews
• Overheard at SMX West, SEOmoz
• SMX West 2008: Linking Panel, Vanessa Fox
• Whiteboard Friday: SMX West Interviews-Matt Cutts, SEOmoz
• Recalling My Experience at SMX West, Eric Lander
• SMX West + Interviews, Matt Cutts
• SMX West Afterthoughts, Jonathan Mendez’s Blog
• SMX Wrap Up and After Thoughts, Wolf Howl
• SMX West 2008 Highlight Video, Barry Schwartz

Video, Music & Image Search

• Invitation to Test Our New Homepage Beta, YouTube Blog
• Site Update 2/27, YouTube Blog
• YouTube Has Higher Resolution Videos, InsideGoogle

Web Analytics

• On the Finding of Help and the Getting of Answers, Burning Questions
• Microsoft adCenter Analytics Beta Upgraded, adCenter Blog

Other Items

• Doodle: St. David’s Day, Googlified
• Doodle: Baba Marta & March 1st Movement, Googlified
• Dear Google, May I Help You Fix Your 404 Error Page?, Closed Loop Marketing Blog
• Doodle: Alexander Graham Bell, Googlified

Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:

• The Importance of Page Layout in SEO
• How NOT To Manipulate Social News: A Sphinn Experience
• Google Sitelinks: The Ultimate FAQ
• SEO Is The Worst Thing Ever Invented
• Advances in Crawling the Web
• Dear Digg – Please Ban My Site
• Google Serving Blended Local Results with Unverified Listings
• Automatic and Adwords Don’t Mix
• Social Link Building 3.0b SP2
• Removing Negative Online Publicity: How Difficult Is It?
• Two New Mods, Two New Logos, A New Blog
• Research Tools to Add to Your Arsenal
• SEO Is NOT Dinosaur Bait For Vanishing Organic SERPs
• Beyond (SEO) Niche Blogging and Branding
• 13 Sites that have millions of links
• Did Twitter Just Get Mybloglog-Dotted?
• Local SEO Guide, Andrew Shotland, Interview
• How to Prioritize Your Site Optimization Efforts
• Does Your Site Have Sex Appeal?
• How Search Really Works: “The” Index (2)
• How Much Information is TMI for your Brand or Professional Reputation?
• Big Company Internet Marketing: Why Being Small Can Be Better
• Tired of Promoting Your Blog? Flip It
• This Month In SEO…
• Blogs Were Hot News In February

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.