Search Month European Edition, January 2010

In Search Month European Edition we bring you a monthly update of European search news, with related links to full coverage. Here’s what happened in January.

Germany content owners call for investigation of Google. German newspaper publishers association (BDZV), Microsoft owned Ciao and online maps service Euro-Cities AG called the German cartel authorities to investigate Google’s business practices. They believe Google is taking away the publishers’ “valuable content.”

Microsoft agrees to EU privacy demands. Microsoft agreed to cooperate with the European Commission by reducing the amount time it retains Bing search data to six months. The European Commission had placed a lot of pressure on the software giant to adjust its privacy policy to be in alignment with EU regulations. Previously, Microsoft had been retaining data for 18 months.

Yandex reports rise in revenues. Russian search giant Yandex reported a 14% rise in revenues in 2009, to a total of 8.7 billion rubles. The number of advertisers grew 55%. More than four-fifths of Yandex’ revenue comes from advertisers paying for links alongside other organic search results.

Search engines might have copyright immunity in UK. A new proposed amendment to the Digital Economy Bill includes a proposal which could exempt search engines from copyright infringement claims from third parties. If this amendment is accepted it would hand search engines legal immunity when it comes to indexing content.

Google Streetview may be illegal in Denmark. Google Streetview might be considered illegal in Denmark. The Danish law states that not the application itself, but taking pictures of people while they are at private places is illegal. “Anyone photographing people who find themselves in a not freely accessible place is punishable by fine or imprisonment up to 6 months.”

Growth in UK Search Market. The newest Search Engine Performance Reports shows a big growth in the UK search market. In the last quarter of 2009 the numbers show QoQ growth is up 27% and year on year growth is up 16%. Google’s share of clicks rose two percentage points to 86.9% and while Google’s share of spend rose one percentage point QoQ to 87.6%, Yahoo! gave up one percentage point in spend.

Dutch Library wants to digitize books and archive sites. The Dutch Royal Library is planning to start digitizing their own books and other content, rather than waiting for Google to do so. The library wants to set up a national information-infrastructure, and to make sure all copyright owners are involved.

German Minister calls Google is a monopoly. German Minister of Justice, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger told German magazine Der Spiegel she feels Google is becoming a monopoly. She also said that she believed Google was getting too much information about citizens through its services.

Dutch SME’s increasing search budget. A Dutch study shows Dutch SME’s increasing search budget to over €250 million in 2010. Last year, individual Dutch SME’s had an average search budget of €4,800, and annual budgets are expected to increase to an average of €5,300 in 2010.

Google mixing up UK and US English in UK search results. In the UK Google seemed to be changing the English language. US spelling featured in UK SERPS, causing uproar among UK-SEO’s. Google says that it has addressed the language-mix up and it’s no longer a problem.

Google loses French appeal. A French appeals court has ruled against Google in a case about the appearance of negative words in Google Suggest. Google has been ordered to remove the word “arnaque” (which translates roughly as “scam”)from appearing as a Google Suggest term on searches for the Centre National Privé de Formation a Distance (CNFDI).

This news is brought to you by Searchcowboys, you can read more about these articles there. Searchcowboys covers the news of what is going on in search in Europe on a daily basis.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.