SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 23, 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:

Search Biz: Where’s Eurekster?, Grab Google’s Gazillions?, WiFi “On Steriods,” & Yahoo Readies For Proxy Battle
Google’s recent decision to make its UK keyword bidding policy conform with the US practice of allowing competitors to bid on each other’s brands has drawn ire and threats of legal action. Today brings more such news of potential legal action against Google from a range of travel companies…
Search Share Compared: Ratings Service Faceoff, June 2007 To April 2008
With the latest search popularity stats now in from Hitwise, Nielsen, comScore, and Compete, it’s time to pit them against each other and see what they agree — and don’t agree — about in terms of search engine popularity….
Compete: Yes, Google Hits New Search Share High
Compete makes it a quadfecta! No real surprise, the latest search engine share stats out from Compete show Google has hit a new high — just as did previous stats out this month from Hitwise, Nielsen and comScore. Plus, an interesting look at how much search traffic Microsoft’s Live…
Search in Pictures: Google Branded Disposable Cups, Yahoo Chef Training, & A Personal Googleplex
In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more….
Microsoft Burns Book Search - Lacks “High Consumer Intent”
Wow. Earlier this month, I heard Microsoft execs highlight Live Search Books as a key advance they were doing in search. Today, news that the site along with Live Search Academic are being closed next week, since they lack the "high consumer intent" that Microsoft is now focusing on. So…
AOL’s Leaked Searches Get Turned Into Play: USER 927
Remember when AOL Proudly Releases Massive Amounts of Private Data back in August of 2006? Well, that story is now back in the news, after a two-year hiatus. Ars Technica reports that a play has been created around one of those searches, specifically searcher number 927. The play is named…
Google’s Safe Browsing Diagnostic Tool
A week ago Google announced the release of a safe browsing diagnostic tool. To use the tool, just append a URL to the end of http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=. For example, to test this site, you would enter http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=http://searchengineland.com/. Google will then return four sets of security information about that page….
SEM News, “Google Tools, Part 3″ & Microsoft’s “Engagement Mapping” Tool
In The Trenches is a weekly spotlight of tips, tricks, and news about the tools search engine marketing professionals use to give them a leg up on the competition. Today: News from the search engines, today’s in-depth look, “Google Tools, Part 3″ and this week’s free tips/resources….