Search Year 2007: Search News, In Review

Each month, I compile Search Month – a recap of all the stories that have happened relating to search, categorized by topic. I thought it would be fun to take all the Search Months over the past year and produce this edition of Search Year 2007. It was far more work than I imagined, but I hope you’ll find this at-a-glance guide to what happened in search during 2007 to be helpful.

At-a-glance might be a stretch. This is a massive post, and I’m sure some people might feel a bit of overload. So, here’s some guidance as to how things are organized.

In many categories, I tried to pick the biggest news story for that topic. This isn’t always the case. With some categories such as SEO, there where many good, compelling stories. In some of those cases, I went with a catchy headline or a recent, broadly applicable article. I wish I’d had the time to more closely go through and pick out the very best in each section, but it was too much effort.

Below each main story are other stories on the topic. These are generally listed in descending chronological order, newest coming first. I find it a handy way to see how things unfolded in a particular category. However, in some cases I have grouped stories by company or subtopic.

Also keep in mind that Search Engine Land has extensive categorized archives – our various "Lands" where you can find stories categorized over time and more deeply than these. I’ve called these out for each category. You can also find a full list here. Our extensive online archives are nice, because the same story can be cross-categorized as appropriate. Unfortunately, there’s minimal cross-categorization in this end-of-the-year recap.

Also remember that if you like Search Year, Search Month does the same thing on a monthly basis, so check it out. It’s available by feed or email, as is our daily search news recap, SearchCap.

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Top 25 Most Popular Stories In 2007
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Below are the most read stories published on Search Engine Land in 2007. To see these stories with full descriptions, visit the Search Engine Land’s Most Popular Stories Of 2007 page.

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AOL: Ads
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AOL Creates "Platform-A Marketing Solutions" Unit – Trying to realize the promise of its "Platform A" integrated display advertising initiative, AOL has created "Platform-A Marketing Solutions." The new unit combines the formerly separate sales teams of AOL and Tacoda. AOL acquired behavioral targeting firm Tacoda in July of this year. The effort is focused chiefly on traditional brand advertisers and the top online advertisers. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s AOL: Search Marketplace category for past articles.

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AOL: Business Issues
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Also see Search Engine Land’s AOL: General category for past articles.

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AOL: Maps & Mobile
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MapQuest Rebuilds ‘From The Ground Up’ - MapQuest has launched a new beta site, which represents a new and rearchitected site with a host of new features and capabilities. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s AOL: Mobile, AOL: Local and AOL: MapQuest categories for past articles.

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AOL: Netscape/Propeller
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Propeller.com: New Home For The Netscape Social News Site – Last week, it was announced that the social news site Netscape had been transformed into a year ago was going way, with Netscape becoming a more classic news portal and "social Netscape" to be moved elsewhere. Now we know where elsewhere is: Propeller.com. See also:

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AOL: Searching
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AOL Launches New Money & Finance Site, Powered By Relegence Search Engine – Roughly a year ago, AOL acquired Relegence, a search technology company that offers real-time information and data feeds on a subscription basis to Wall Street professionals. Now AOL is bringing the fruits of that acquisition to a newly redesigned Money & Finance site intended to go head to head with Yahoo Finance, which is the current market leader. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s AOL: General category for past articles.

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AOL: Video
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AOL’s Truveo Introduces New Video Search Site And Consumer Destination - AOL acquired video search engine Truveo in January 2006 and has used it primarily as a technology platform to power AOL video since that time. Simultaneously, the company has been supporting video search on third party sites. You could do video searches on Truveo.com but it wasn’t really presented as a consumer destination – until now. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s AOL: Video category for past articles.

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AOL: Other
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Google Talk Meets AOL Instant Messager: Time Warner & Google Complete AIM Integration Deal

Also see Search Engine Land’s AOL: General category for past articles.

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Ask.com: Ads
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Microsoft Office Live To Let Customers Purchase Ads On Ask.com – Ask Sponsored Listings are going to be added to Microsoft Office Live’s adManager Beta search advertising service. This is reportedly the first time in five years that two of the top five search engines have joined together to offer search engine ads to advertisers. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Ask: Sponsored Listings category for past articles.

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Ask.com: AskCity
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Ask City’s Shape Search Tool For Local Search Results – The Ask.com Blog announced a neat new feature that enables you to literally shape your own local search results. You can go to Ask City, locate a location, draw a circle or square in a certain location and then search specifically within that location. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Ask: City category for past articles.

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Ask.com: Bloglines
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Bloglines Beta To Challenge Google Reader – Bloglines released a new public beta of their popular web-based RSS reader. The new beta is optimized to run well in Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox. The new beta has several new features including a customizable start page with drag and drop AJAX functionality, three feed viewing options including a "Quick View," "3-Pane View," and a "Full View." New enhanced AJAX drag-and-drop makes feed management easy, plus a new “Unread System” that makes marking feed items clearer, quicker and easier. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Ask: Bloglines category for past articles.

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Ask.com: Business Issues
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IAC To Split Up, Extends Google Ad Deal Worth $3.5+ Billion – Today is a big day for IAC, Ask.com’s parent company. First they announce they are breaking the company into five publicly traded entities, and then they announce they have extended their search ad deal with Google. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Ask: Business Issues category for past articles.

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Ask.com: Marketing
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Now Starring: The Algorithm – Ask.com To Focus On Ranking System In New TV Ads -

Ask.com is launching a new TV and web ad campaign today, to try to generate buzz about the Ask.com search engine. The article says this ad campaign is "gearing up to a relaunch of the site and the debut of its new search technology later this year," which I assume is the Edison project. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Ask: Promotions category for past articles.

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Ask: Mobile
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Forty-Eight Hours With Ask Mobile – On Friday I received a briefing on Ask Mobile (with GPS) and a demo phone with the application pre-installed. I now have three mobile devices that I’m carrying: a traditional cellphone, a Windows Mobile device and the Ask Mobile demo phone. It’s quite a challenge to physically manage all these devices as I walk and drive around. I’ve been testing Ask Mobile casually beside Google Maps for Windows Mobile, Microsoft’s Live Search/Local Mobile application and WAP-based Yahoo oneSearch, which just rolled out yesterday to a broad range of Asian countries. This post offers some preliminary reactions to Ask Mobile based on an initial weekend of testing. One big caveat: I haven’t been able to test the sharing and social features, which are potentially most compelling aspect of the service, because Ask Mobile is not integrated with my contacts. (Almost anything in the application can be shared with your contacts.)

Also see Search Engine Land’s Ask: Mobile category for past articles.

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Ask.com: SEO
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Also see Search Engine Land’s Ask: SEO category for past articles.

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Ask.com: Searching
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Ask Relaunches: Now "Ask 3D" – Ask.com is touting the release of "Ask3D" as a "major leap forward" for search. A bold three-panel interface (taken from the experimental Ask X) integrates more multimedia content, including images, videos, music files, as well as more structured text-based content. It also offers a battery of impressive features – new and existing – to bring more context and help to search results.

Also see Search Engine Land’s Ask: Web Search category for past articles.

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B2B
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B2B Search Tips: More On Writing Killer Ads – It seems so obvious, yet many B2B marketers don’t focus on the most fundamental element of any successful search ad campaign—the copy. I’ve found that writing great ads comes down to five simple principles. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Strictly Business column for past articles.

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Back To Basics
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If Paid Search Isn’t Working Then You’re Doing Something Wrong – The Nielsen Company recently completed a survey asking consumers their opinions on advertising, including offline and online. When asked “To What Extent Do You Trust the Following Forms of Advertising?”, paid search ads were ranked near the bottom compared to other forms of advertising. This should not come to a surprise to any paid search marketer, but it’s also not bad news, either. Paid search marketing, when done correctly, fills consumer needs. And if your ads aren’t attracting clicks and conversions, you’re simply not recognizing or filling those needs. Here are a few things to consider if your paid search campaign isn’t delivering the kinds of results you’d like. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Back To Basics column for past articles.

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Beyond USA
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German-Backed Search Project, Theseus, Given $165 Million Grant - Theseus, a German search research project, has received a $165 million grant from the European Union. Theseus aims to develop an advanced multimedia search engine. The EU will allow German subsidy of the project through 2011. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Search Engines: Outside USA category for past articles.

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Business & Revenues
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WPP Grabs 24/7 Real Media For $649 Million – UK based global advertising firm WPP has acquired the publicly traded 24/7 Real Media for a whopping $649 million. The company was previously being looked at by Microsoft (for $1 billion) according to rumor. It follows on the heels of several high-profile acquisitions, including Yahoo’s intended purchase of Right Media and Google’s planned acquisition of DoubleClick. On a smaller scale ad firm Interpublic bought SEM Reprise Media last month. WPP already has investments in VideoEgg, mobile search firm JumpTap and Spot Runner. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Business Issues category for past articles.

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Censorship
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Did Dalai Lama Award Cause China To Redirect Google, Yahoo & Microsoft Search Traffic To Baidu? - Reports have been coming in that people trying to reach Google, Yahoo and Microsoft from within China or via Chinese ISPs are being redirected to Baidu. Some have accused Baidu of hijacking the traffic, but we think it’s likely that China is upset with the US over the award it granted to the Dalai Lama and is retaliating by hurting US-based search engines. Back in 2002, when China was upset with Google, it similarly redirected traffic. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Legal: Censorship category for past articles.

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Copyright
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Google, Microsoft & Others Want Copyright Warnings To Be Clearer – The Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), which includes Google and Microsoft, are filing a complaint with the FCC about how some content companies are taking their copyright warnings a bit too far. The CCIA would like the FCC to require these content companies, including sports leagues, movie publishers, book publishers and more, to stop using wording the copyright warnings in an obscure and unclear manner.

CCIA, Google & Microsoft Launch "Defend Fair Use" Web Site

Also see Search Engine Land’s Legal: Copyright category for past articles.

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Click Fraud
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Industry Group Proposes Eight Principles To Ensure Click Quality – The Click Quality Council, a group of online advertisers, advertising agencies and click quality monitoring firms formed to propose and help establish standards for search advertising quality, has proposed eight principles for ensuring industry-wide click quality. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Legal: Clickfraud category for past articles.

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Conferences: Pubcon
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December’s Battle Of The Search Conferences – It’s mid-November, when WebmasterWorld’s PubCon is traditionally held. But all’s quiet on the Las Vegas front. What’s up? This year, PubCon has moved to December, running head-to-head against Incisive Media’s SES event in Chicago. What’s a search marketer to do? See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s SEM Industry: Conferences category for past articles.

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Conferences: SES
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Goodbye Search Engine Strategies! – It’s Search Engine Strategies San Jose next week. For Chris Sherman and I, it’s our swan song. This is the last SES event that either of us will program, with our search marketing conference efforts going forward focused on our own Search Marketing Expo (SMX) events. Some history about how the SES show developed.

Also see Search Engine Land’s SEM Industry: Conferences category for past articles.

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Conferences: SMX
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SMX West 2008 Agenda Up: 3 Days, More Than 50 Sessions! – Search Engine Land’s first three day search marketing conference especially designed for beginning and intermediate search marketers comes to California at the end of February 2008, though there’s plenty for experts to learn from, as well. Keynotes feature Search Engine Land editor Danny Sullivan; Cuill’s vice president of products Louis Monier (also founder of AltaVista) and "Generation Next: Search In The Coming Decade," a panel discussion with luminaries from the major search engines predicting where they see search headed. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s SEM Industry: Conferences category for past articles.

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Digg
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Digg Gives In To User Revolt; Are Those DMCA Takedown Notices Even Valid? – After a grassroots revolt by Digg users, Digg has decided to stop censoring posts about an HD-DVD decryption number used by the industry-backed Advanced Access Content System to protect HD-DVDs. How the story unfolded, plus more on how the DMCA takedown notices being issued by the AACS to Google don’t seem to be valid and certainly aren’t like the usual ones fired off for actual copyright theft. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Digg category for past articles.

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Digg: Listing Tactics
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It’s The (Other) Algorithm, Stupid! Understanding DiggRank – Have you ever wondered what it really takes for a story submitted to Digg to get to the home page? Or why a certain story—even a really good, social media friendly story—never got to the home page? I’m frequently asked the question, "Hey, my story has [number] of Diggs but it still hasn’t been promoted to the home page. Any idea what’s wrong?" And, relatively less frequently, I hear someone saying in amazement, "Wow, all it took was 29 Diggs and that story rocketed to the home page!" I’m always tempted to reply "It’s the algorithm, stupid!" Digg has an algorithm? Yes, just as PageRank and other algorithms are used to rank web pages by search engines, some social sites use algorithms to determine which stories become popular. Call it DiggRank, if you will. Let’s take a deeper look at what the Digg algorithm is and venture a few guesses about how it works. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Digg category for past articles.

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Directories
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The Great Google Directory Ban Of Sept. 2007 – Earlier this month, a discussion on our Sphinn site looked at how it seemed Google was going after directories with penalties. But was this really happening, or was it just forum noise coming out in particular from Digital Point? Today, Rand Fishkin takes a long look in the issue in What Makes a Good Web Directory, and Why Google Penalized Dozens of Bad Ones and decides yes, Google went after some directories. He also offers some tips on what he thinks makes a "good" directory that won’t be banned. Not enough for you? Matt Cutts of Google recently offered some advice, following the concerns that have been raised. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Open Directory Project category for past articles.

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Domaining
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Direct Navigation And Domain Empires – Business 2.0 has a fairly comprehensive (cover) story about domain portfolios and "direct navigation." It starts off with a profile of Vancouver entrepreneur Kevin Ham ("The Man Who Owns the Internet"), who operates a $300 million domain "empire" but goes on to discuss others who have become wealthy from domain speculation, parking and domain portfolio ownership. (The author of the article Paul Sloan has a related post here.). The ads on Ham’s domains are served by Yahoo.

Also see Search Engine Land’s Search Ads: Domaining category for past articles.

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Facebook: Ads
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My Love/Hate Relationship With Facebook Ads – Last month I began running a campaign on Facebook’s new ad network. After hearing the hype, I couldn’t resist playing around with it as soon as I had a reason to. At first I was somewhat frustrated because I wasn’t getting any page views or clicks. It took some time experimenting with my bid before I found the magic number. So far I am happy with the results I’ve seen over the past month, but there are many areas where the program could improve. Below are 10 ways Facebook could improve their social ads platform, as well as some pretty cool features the system already has. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Facebook category for past articles.

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Facebook: Business Issues
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Facebook To IPO In 2008 (It’ll Have To) – Facebook is "years away" from going public, said founder Mark Zuckerberg last week. I also see Facebook will have more than 700 employees next year, in 2008. So, like Google and Microsoft, it’ll be forced to IPO against its will sometime next year, if those employees all have options (as they likely will).

Also see Search Engine Land’s Facebook category for past articles.

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Facebook: Privacy
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The Facebook Privacy Fallout Continues – For those just joining us, Facebook was overly aggressive with its Beacon tracking program, one of several new ad programs launched in early November. Beacon required users to opt-out or have their activity and transactions on Facebook partner sites broadcast to their networks back on Facebook. Discovering this, many people were frustrated and upset by what they felt was a lack of disclosure regarding the implications of the tracking. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Facebook category for past articles.

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Facebook: Other
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Facebook Opens Profiles To Tap Into Google Traffic, While Google Grabs Facebook’s News Feed Idea – Google is getting a bit more like Facebook by enabling a Facebook-style news feed within its Orkut social networking site, while the king of the walled gardens Facebook acknowledges in actions (rather than words) that it really can’t go it alone without search engines like Google, as it prepares to let crawlers into its public user profiles. Actually, Facebook is telling its users that existing profiles already accessible to search engines will be exposed even more. More on the moves, with lots of screenshots and explanations.

Also see Search Engine Land’s Facebook category for past articles.

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Google: AdSense
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Google AdSense To Give Publishers Access To Review Placement Targeted Ads Prior To Ad Placement - The Google AdSense blog announced they will be rolling out the "Ad Review Center" to publishers over the course of the next few months. The Ad Review Center will give publishers the ability to review placement targeted ads before they are displayed on publisher sites. Plus, it will give publishers the ability to review current placement targeted ads and have them blocked from their sites. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: AdSense category for past articles.

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Google: AdSense Audio Ads
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Google Releases Audio Ads To Public While eBay Begins Radio Ad Auction Push – Google announced they have completed their audio ad test and is now in the process of rolling out audio ads to all US advertisers. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: Audio Ads and Google: Other Ads categories for past articles.

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Google: AdSense Video & TV Ads
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Google TV Ads: Google Brings Auction Model To TV Advertising – Google is launching a beta trial of TV ads with cable company Astound and satellite TV provider Echostar, which owns Dish Network. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: YouTube & Video and Google: Other Ads categories for past articles.

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Google: AdSense Print Ads & Other Ads
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NY Times Tracks Google’s Traditional Media Efforts – Miguel Helft at the New York Times has a relatively long and interesting article, with some interesting details, that rounds up the status and mixed results (so far) of Google’s moves into radio, TV and print newspapers. From my understanding, the print newspaper ads have been the most successful to date. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: Print Ads & AdSense For Newspapers category for past articles.

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Google: AdWords
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Secrets Of Google Quality Score Revealed!!! (Not.) – The nice folks from Google were in for a visit a week or so ago. One of the topics on the day’s agenda was Ad Quality. If you read extremely closely, much of what they presented in their briefing is also described at the AdWords help center (see What is a ‘Quality Score’ and how is it calculated?). They also presented some new angles and dispelled a few myths. Here are some of the key takeaways on Quality Score (herein abbreviated "QS"). See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: AdWords category for past articles.

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Google: AdWords, Features
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Personalized AdWords: Google Ads You See Influenced By Previous Searches -Google is personalizing ads for people based on their previous search query. For example, you can do a search for weather forecast, then conduct a new search on holiday in spain, and then do another search on weather forecast and you should then see ads for weather reports in Spain. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: AdWords category for past articles.

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Google: AdWords, Legal
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Google: Click Fraud Is 0.02% Of Clicks – Finally, we have a click fraud rate from Google itself: less than 0.02 percent of all clicks slip past its filters and are caught after advertisers request reviews. That low figure is sure to bring out the critics who will disagree. Below, more about how Google comes up with the figure plus some click fraud fighting initiatives it plans to implement later this year. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: AdWords and Google: Legal categories for past articles.

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Google: Analytics
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Google Analytics Leaves Beta & Adds Requested Features – The Google Analytics blog announced that they are taking Google Analytics out of beta and adding several features based on customer feedback. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: Analytics category for past articles.

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Google: Apps
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Google Gears Brings Offline Web Applications To Life – Today at Google Developer Day 2007, Google released Google Gears. Google Gears is a browser extension that will help developers create offline web applications in the open source framework. Gears is powered by JavaScript APIs enabling data storage, application caching, and multi-threading technologies for offline browsing and application use. Google Reader is the first online application to offer "Gears-enabled offline capabilities," Google told me. So you would load up Google Reader while you are online, it will download your feeds. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google category and subcategories for past articles.

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Google: Apps, Office Suite
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If You Know About Google Docs, You’re In The Minority – According to a new survey of 600 "PC users" (and see here) by the NPD Group, 73 percent of Americans have "never heard of, never tried" web-based productivity software replacements for Microsoft Office. Roughly 21 percent have heard of but still never tried these alternatives, which include Google Docs and Zoho. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: Apps For Your Domain and Google: Docs & Spreadsheets categories for past articles.

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Google: Book Search
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Google Book Search Expands – Although Google currently has a wealth of books in their Google Book Search database, this isn’t enough either for them or us, so they’ve taken steps to improve the situation. If you now do a search, you’ll find references to millions of books that they haven’t yet digitized. You can then click on an "About the Book" page where you can find basic book information such as author, title, publication date, and where possible, reviews and web references. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: Book Search category for past articles.

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Google: Business Issues
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Google Gets A Tag Line: "Search, Ads & Apps" – To my knowledge, Google never had a tag line. Yesterday, it announced it had gained one: "Search, Ads & Apps." But wasn’t the tag line "Don’t Be Evil?" Or wasn’t it something about organizing the world’s information? Come along, and I’ll try to sort it out. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: Business Issues category for past articles.

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Google: Checkout
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eBay Pulls Google AdWords Ads To Protest Google Checkout Moves – This week, eBay Live is happening in Boston, but the event is likely to be overshadowed by a fascinating and fast-developing controversy between the auction giant and Google. Rumors from ComparisonEngines.com and other sources last night and earlier today reported that eBay had pulled its ads off Google to protest a planned party (now cancelled) to promote Google Checkout, called "Let Freedom Ring," that was to coincide with eBay Live. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: Checkout category for past articles.

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Google: Cloud Infrastructure
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Google & IBM Team Up on ‘Cloud Computing’ Research – Google announced they have teamed up with IBM to "provide hardware, software, and services to augment university curricula and expand research horizons." Google and I.B.M. Join in ‘Cloud Computing’ Research from the New York Times explains the two companies are building out a ‘cloud computing’ environment to help students obtain the technical training required to work at companies like Google and IBM. Universities to pilot this program include Carnegie-Mellon University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Maryland. See also:

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Google: Critics
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Google: As Open As It Wants To Be (IE, When It’s Convenient) – In two weeks, we’ve had two "open" initiatives from Google: OpenSocial, to free social networking data from behind the Facebook walled garden and the Open Handset Alliance, to free cell phones from a myriad of complicated mobile OS platforms and carriers who want to restrict features. I’ve seen some people writing about open as the new black, with Google showing its fashion sense by dressing in the latest color. But lest anyone think that Google’s wardrobe is being replaced with an all-open line-up, it’s worth remembering that recently, open mainly fits Google when it’s behind competitively in a space. Let’s consider the places where staying closed is what suits Google best. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: Critics category for past articles.

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Google: Custom Search
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Google Customized Search Engines to Harness The Wisdom of Experts? – Back in October, 2006, Google announced on the Official Google Blog that they were enabling people to create their own custom search engines. If you asked yourself why they were doing this, and how it might provide benefits to individual site owners, searchers as a whole, and Google itself, there are some answers that came out yesterday at the US Patent Office. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: Custom Search Engine category for past articles.

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Google: DoubleClick
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FTC’s Xmas Gift To Google: Approval Of DoubleClick Acquisition – The US Federal Trade Commission has granted its approval for Google to purchase DoubleClick. Google has a press release up with the news (and see also here), and the FTC announcement is here. The many parties have raised privacy issues with the deal, and the FTC noted this was not germane to its approval. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: Acquisitions category for past articles.

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Google: Employees
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Is Google Losing Its Magic For Employees? – Today’s Wall Street Journal featured an article entitled "Start-Ups Make Inroads With Google’s Work Force," which focused on emerging potential retention problems at Google. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: Employees and Google: Offices categories for past articles.

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Google: FeedBurner
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How Feedburner Adds Up Subscriber Numbers – Last Saturday, there was a gasp of collective horror in the blogosphere as FeedBurner subscriber stats plunged for many sites. Today, it’s happened again. Don’t panic! Your subscribers are probably all still there, with Google Reader to blame for the missing numbers. Below, our comprehensive guide to how FeedBurner compiles subscriber stats explains all, today’s glitch, and why those occasional plunges happen. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: FeedBurner category for past articles.

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Google: Gmail
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Google Officially Opens Gmail To World – Google finally makes it official. Gmail is open to all. An announcement on the Official Google Blog confirms what everyone already discovered last week, that Gmail restrictions have been dropped. You still can invite friends and family to use Gmail, like you did before. However, invitations are no longer necessary to open an account. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: Gmail category for past articles.

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Google: Googlebombs
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Google Kills Bush’s Miserable Failure Search & Other Google Bombs – After just over two years, Google has finally defused the "Google Bomb" that has returned US President George W. Bush at the top of its results in a search on miserable failure. The move wasn’t a post-State Of The Union Address gift for Bush. Instead, it’s part of an overall algorithm change designed to stop such mass link pranks from working. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Link Bombs category for past articles.

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Google: iGoogle Home Page
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iGoogle, Personalized Search And You – Yesterday was "Google Personalization Day." We spent roughly two hours touring the history of personalized search at Google, the genesis of these products and getting a glimpse of where it all might be going. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: iGoogle category for past articles.

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Google: Jet & Vehicles
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Your Guide To The Google Jet – It’s now confirmed that NASA has granted Google’s cofounders landing rights for their private jet at Moffett Field. That’s a NASA-run airport practically next door to Google, now making the founders the envy of other Silicon Valley execs who could only dream of the same. With the news out, it seemed a good time to revisit what’s known about that Google Jet. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: Jet category for past articles.

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Google: Knol
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Google Knol – Google’s Play To Aggregate Knowledge Pages – Move over Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers, Mahalo, and Squidoo. Maybe. That’s because Google’s testing its own service to let people build a repository of knowledge. In fact, knowledge forms the core of the service’s name: Google Knol. Screenshot of Google Knol page (feel free to use this and those below, just link to this story, please) Google Knol is designed to allow anyone to create a page on any topic, which others can comment on, rate, and contribute to if the primary author allows. The service is in a private test beta.

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: Knol category for past articles.

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Google: Maps & Local, Social Features
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Google My Maps: Mashups For The Masses – Google has just launched "My Maps," an impressively simple tool within Google Maps that allows users to create personal "mashups" and save or share those with friends or the world at large. A range of formatting options enables the maps to be highly customized and include images or video. Maps can be created "manually" by dropping placemarks on the map or through one-click saving of selected search results. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: Maps & Local and Google: Earth categories for past articles.

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Google: Maps & Local, StreetView
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Google Launches "Street View" Photography – A new feature at Google allows you to see street-level photography tied to maps. (NOTE: This ran on May 29 but proved so popular in June that we’re including it in the June popular stories round-up).

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: Maps & Local and Google: Earth categories for past articles.

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Google: Maps & Local, Features
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Google Maps Adds Embed Map Feature – Google Lat Long Blog has announced that you can now embed your Google Maps easily into your web pages. Just go to the map you like, click on "link to this page" at the top right corner of the map and select the code within the "Paste HTML to embed in website" box. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: Maps & Local and Google: Earth categories for past articles.

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Google: Maps & Local, Other
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Google Responds To Katrina Controversy With Fresh New Orleans Images – The Google Blog has responded to the concerns about showing pre-Katrina images for New Orleans. In short, Google said they changed the imagery back in September 2006 to provide higher resolution images of the city, even though views were from before Hurricane Katrina caused widespread damage. Now those pre-Katrina images have been replaced with high resolution photos shot in 2006, done on an expedited basis, the company said. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: Maps & Local and Google: Earth categories for past articles.

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Google: Marketing
=======================

Karen Wickre: Mother Of The Google Blog On Google’s Official Blogging – When Google launched the Official Google Blog back in 2004, it started as sort of a ho-hum event. There wasn’t anything particularly gripping, and some wondered if the company should be more edgy with its posts. Since then, Google has launched more than 70 additional official blogs over the years. Some have gotten edgy; a few even have comments, but most important, they’ve turned into an essential communications vehicle for the company. A few weeks ago, I sat down with Karen Wickre, who aside from her formal title at Google of senior manager, global communications & public affairs, is who I’d best describe as "mother of the blogs." Karen is ultimately responsible for how they all work, and she shared some insight on how Google makes use of blogging. Will the big three of Google – Larry, Sergey and Eric — ever blog? Will comments come to the main Google blog? Will Google’s blogging replace press releases? See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: Marketing category for past articles.

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Google: Mobile, Android/Gphone
=============================

Google’s Android Arrives: Not Gphone But An Open Source Mobile Phone Platform - After literally years of anticipation, rumor, and increasingly aggressive speculation about a Google Phone, Google has formally announced that the Gphone cometh – sort of. Today, the company has gone public with news of an open source mobile operating system called "Android," named after the company Google acquired in 2005. Backing Android is the Open Handset Alliance, a group of over 30 companies all pledging to contribute to the project. Below, a detailed, comprehensive look based on a pre-briefing with Google and from today’s news conference. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: Mobile category for past articles.

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Google: Mobile, Features
=============================

Google Introduces New "My Location" Feature for Mobile Devices – Google is introducing a new "My Location" feature for Google Maps for Mobile that takes advantage of GPS (if present) but uses cell-tower triangulation for the majority of phones where GPS isn’t present or won’t work for one reason or another. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: Mobile category for past articles.

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Google: Mobile, Goog411
=============================

Google Voice Local Search Launched – You’ve heard the rumors. Now you can try the experimental service from Google Labs, Google Voice Local Search. Call (1-800-GOOG-411) and get local information by talking to your phone, at least in the United States. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: Mobile category for past articles.

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Google: Mobile, Wireless
=============================

FCC Accepts Google Airwaves, Inc’s 700MHz Application; AT&T’s Deemed Incomplete – When the applications were submitted to the FCC to bid in the forthcoming 700MHz wireless spectrum auction, it appeared that there were going to be a handful of major bidders: Verizon, AT&T, Cox Communications, Frontier Wireless, MetroPCS, and Google. In fact, there were 266 would-be bidders that submitted applications, although the FCC accepted only 96 of them. The rest were deemed incomplete. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: Mobile and Google: Internet Access categories for past articles.

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Google: Mobile, Other
=============================

Google Partners With LG & Mobile Handset Maker Deal Chart – Google has gained another mobile phone handset partnership, this time with LG. As of the second quarter of this year, selected LG handsets shipped throughout the world will be preloaded with mobile versions of Google software, including Google Maps, Gmail and Blogger. Yahoo signed a similar deal with LG in February. It’ll be interesting to see if both companies will now have preinstalled apps on the same phones. As John Battelle notes, we’re in a new round of handset distribution wars. To help, I’ll summarize who is where in a chart below. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: Mobile category for past articles.

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Google: News
======================

Google News Now Hosting Wire Stories & Promises Better Variety In Results – Today, Google News will begin offering articles from several major wire services and news agencies hosted on its own site, rather than sending readers away from Google. The move is part of licensing agreements that have been stuck over the past year. Google News is also promising better duplicate story detection, so that the original source of a news article should be more likely to get visitors and readers get a better experience by not stumbling over the same story hosted by different publications. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: News category for past articles.

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Google: Offices
=======================

Oklahoma, Where The Google Comes Sweepin’ Down The Plain – From California, Google has spread out across the great land of the United States. New York! Washington! Arizona! And now which of the fifty nifty United States is Google heading to next? Oklahoma! Below, some news of Google’s plans for the Sooner State and well as a recap of what other states it has conquered over time, as it builds the United States Of Google. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: Offices category for past articles.

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Google: Personalized Search
==========================

Google Search History Expands, Becomes Web History – Google’s Search History feature, which was switched on as a default option for many Google searchers in February, has now been renamed Web History to reflect how it has expanded to track what Google users do as they surf the web. It’s a huge move for Google and raises anew privacy issues. A detailed look at how the system works, how to pause or delete logging if you want, the impact on search results and more. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: Personalized Search and Google: Web History & Search History categories for past articles.

======================
Google: Privacy
======================

Google Anonymizing Search Records To Protect Privacy – Google has announced that it will now anonymize the server log data that it collects after 18 to 24 months, as a way to better protect the privacy of its users. Until now, Google has retained server log data in its original form indefinitely, which made it possible for anyone with access to those logs — such as government agencies possibly gaining them through legal processes — to potentially track queries back to users. I’m going to revisit what Google collects in its server logs to explain how that can — and cannot — be used to track information back to an particular user. Then I’ll also recap some of the other places where search history is retained, since it isn’t only within server logs. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Legal: Privacy category for past articles.

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Google: Reader
===================

Google Reader Now Reporting Subscriber Figures – Earlier this year, iGoogle started reporting the number of readers putting a blog on their personalized home pages at Google. Now Google Reader is doing the same, showing how many readers a blog has within Google’s dedicated feed reading service. More on this below, especially how in contrast, FeedBurner/Google Feedfetcher report a combined figure for iGoogle plus Google Reader, as well as some top blog lists that are being assembled. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: Reader category for past articles.

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Google: SEO Issues, General
==========================

The Anatomy Of A Google Search Result – Matt Cutts, keeper of all things webspam and webmaster for Google, is reviving his video series. The first in the series is about the anatomy of a search result. Below, an in-depth look from the video and beyond.

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: SEO category for past articles.

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Google: SEO Issues, Paid Links
============================

The 2007 Paid Links War, In Review – The paid links debate is back, this time about whether Google wants all links in a paid post to have a nofollow attribute. Below, a look at the latest round, plus a recap of this year’s "War On Paid Links" by Google and where the other search engines stand on the subject. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: SEO category for past articles.

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Google: SEO Issues, Supplemental Results
=====================================

Google Improves Results For Supplemental Pages – According to a new post on the Google Webmaster Central blog, the supplemental index is no longer, well, supplemental. Google has long had a two-tiered index and webmasters have generally feared the second, supplemental tier. A Forbes article earlier this year called it "Google Hell", as historically, those pages weren’t crawled as often as those in the main index, weren’t returned in search results unless the main index didn’t contain enough matching pages, and were labeled "supplemental," which implied they were inferior to the other results. In July, Google removed the supplemental label, saying that they had overhauled the supplemental crawling and index system and therefore the label was no longer needed. Now, they say that the next set of improvements are complete and that they now search both the main and supplemental index for all queries, not just the long tail queries that the main index can’t satisfy. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: SEO category for past articles.

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Google: SEO Issues, Webmaster Central
====================================

Google Webmaster Central Leaves Beta; Its Blog Gains Comments – Google Webmaster Central has officially come out of beta, about a year-and-a-half after Google Sitemaps – core of the service later renamed Google Webmaster Central — launched. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: Webmaster Central category for past articles.

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Google: Searching
=======================

Google 2.0: Google Universal Search – Google is undertaking the most radical change to its search results ever, introducing a "Universal Search" system that will blend listings from its news, video, images, local and book search engines among those it gathers from crawling web pages. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: Web Search category for past articles.

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Google: Social Moves
=======================

Google The Stealth Social Network? – Google’s plan to socialize its various applications continues. Google Operating System has spotted code in Gmail that may lead to a Facebook-style news feed of status updates from your Gmail contacts. More about this and Google’s continued "stealth social network" moves below. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: OpenSocial category for past articles.

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Google: Trends
=======================

Google Meme: Hot Trends Added To Google Trends – Google has launched a meme-like feature to Google Trends. The Google Trends home page now has a section named "Hot Trends," which shows the hottest queries for the day. You can also look back historically and see the hottest queries for that day.

Google Trends Now Updated Hourly

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google Trends category for past articles.

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Google: Video & YouTube
=======================

YouTube Tips: How To Market Via YouTube – "The Secret Strategies Behind Many ‘Viral’ Videos" from TechCrunch has an awesome list of tips and techniques to make your YouTube videos a success. A quick rundown of some of those tips. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: YouTube & Video category for past articles.

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Google: YouTube Lawsuits
========================

The Big Viacom Sues GOOG & YouTube Roundup – Yesterday, news came out about Viacom suing Google for $1 billion over alleged video copyright infringement on YouTube. With some dust settling, I thought it would be helpful to recap some of the analysis out there. I’m pulling this roundup mostly from coverage you’ll find on Techmeme. Come along, and we’ll go through the official company statements from both sides, the actual case, the importance of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s "safe harbor" provision and how Viacom scoured YouTube to build its case. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Google: YouTube & Video category for past articles.

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Google: Other
======================

Map Of Google’s Products – Ever wanted to see all of Google’s products and services mapped out in icon view on one single page? Zorgloob has created a map of Google products, which is just enormous. If you click on a product image within the map, you are taking to a page that describes the product and enables you to rate that product. See also:

===================
In House SEM
===================

How To Manage In-House SEO When Your Team Is Ignoring You – It’s one month before your deadline and you realize nothing is done. Specifically, you need to get others to buy into your plans to move things forward…and no one has responded to your e-mails. What to do? See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s In House column for past articles.

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Legal Issues
===================

Paid Search Ads & Trademarks: A Review Of Court Cases, Legal Disputes & Policies – Over the years, we’ve seen a number of lawsuits filed against search engines or between companies regarding ads that are linked to trademark terms. Below, a rundown on some of the more notable cases plus some background on the issues. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Legal category for past articles.

===================
Link Building
===================

5 Deadly Sins Guaranteed To Kill Your Link Requests – Here in the Link Week column, we mostly discuss intermediate to advanced linking related subjects, but I’m compelled to cover a very basic topic this week. Link requests. The link builders are out in force this summer. The proof is in my inbox. Over the two weeks since my last LinkWeek column, I’ve counted the number of link requests I’ve received. The total? Forty-two. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Link Building category and its Link Week column for past articles.

==================================
Local Search & Maps: Business Issues
==================================

Yellow Pages Publisher Buys Business.com For $350 Million – RH Donnelley, which acquired SEM firm LocalLaunch in 2006 and owns the local search/online yellow pages site DexKnows, has announced the acquisition of Business.com and its related properties for $350 million. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Maps & Local Search Engines category for past articles.

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Local Search & Maps: Products
============================

Microsoft vs. Google: Street Photography Rigs Compared – Gizmodo, in something of a tongue-in-cheek post, compares the cars and cameras Google is using to capture its StreetView imagery with those being used by Microsoft for what has been known as StreetSide. StreetSide is a Live Local product that predated Google’s StreetView but has been limited to San Francisco and Seattle. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Maps & Local Search Engines category for past articles.

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Local Search & Maps: Stats
============================

Survey: Search Now Top Resource For Local Information - Local SEM firm WebVisible and Nielsen last year surveyed U.S. consumers about their local search behavior. There were some very interesting and striking findings. For example, 51% of users were doing category searches for local businesses without a geographic modifier. Today findings from a second wave of that survey were released. The second survey is broader and addresses a range of issues, including consumer attitudes toward advertising in general, use of the Internet vs. traditional media for local information, and offline purchase behavior. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Stats category for past articles.

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Local Search & Maps: Searching
============================

Also see Search Engine Land’s Maps & Local Search Engines category for past articles.

===================
Local SEM
===================

Anatomy & Optimization Of A Local Business Profile – Many local companies depend upon their information’s presence in various directories in order to advertise themselves, and the basic instrument of these marketing efforts is the Business Profile. The majority of businesses out there pay little attention to these beyond wanting their name, address, and phone numbers to be correct. However, there are far more components of business profiles beyond the bare basics, and this article will outline many of them and how they should be handled for best effect. Optimizing business listings and profiles can make all the difference in enabling potential customers to find you and in selecting you from your pack of competitors. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Local Search Marketing and Local SEO categories for past articles.

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Microsoft: adCenter
=========================

Microsoft Completes aQuantive Acquisition, Creates ‘Advertiser and Publisher Solutions’ Group – Microsoft has officially completed the acquisition of aQuantive Inc., which includes agency Avenue A | Razorfish and the Atlas ad-serving platform. The acquisition was the largest in Microsoft’s history, valued at roughly $6 billion. The company has also simultaneously created a new group that it’s calling the "Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Group." See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Microsoft: adCenter category for past articles.

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Microsoft: Book Search
=========================

Microsoft Adds In-Copyright Books & New Features To Live Search Books – Today Microsoft announced that they have added in-copyright books to Live Search Books. Microsoft said they have only included books that their publishing partners have given permission to include. In addition, Live Search Books upgraded their design to enable two pane browsing of books. On the left pane are book details with "search inside the book" features, while on the right pane is the book itself. Microsoft says this "makes it easy to scan and preview search results."

=========================
Microsoft: Business Issues
=========================

Microsoft Seeks 30 Percent Of Search Market And Much Bigger Chunk Of Online Ad Revenues - Reuters reports on a speech given at an investor conference by Microsoft’s Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft’s platforms and services division. In the speech Johnson reportedly said that Microsoft wants to capture 30 percent of the consumer search market as well as a much larger slice of the online ad pie, in "three to five years." Johnson added that the company wants to be "one of the top two" in online advertising. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Microsoft: Business Issues category for past articles.

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Microsoft: Employees
=========================

Microsoft Appoints New Head Of Search & Ads – Microsoft has appointed Satya Nadella to head the newly formed Search and Ad Platform Group at Microsoft. Kevin Johnson, the president of Microsoft’s Platform Services Division, will be Satya Nadella’s boss. Nadella will start his new role on April 19th. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Microsoft: Employees category for past articles.

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Microsoft: Maps & Local
=========================

Microsoft Releases Upgrades for Maps, Local, and Mobile – Microsoft is now rolling out and include feature and content enhancements for maps, local, and mobile services. The biggest news is the introduction of a new voice search product called "Live Search 411," built on Tellme’s content and voice capabilities. In addition to local business listings, the service provides movie show times, weather, and airlines information. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Microsoft: Live Search Local category for past articles.

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Microsoft: Mobile
=========================

Microsoft Builds A Better Mobile Search Experience – Yesterday Microsoft announced a number of content upgrades and changes to its local search for mobile devices, which include reviews, one-click directions, interactive maps, photos, and so on. There’s more specific detail on the Virtual Earth blog. All the major search engines are now offering blended search results on their mobile-friendly sites. (As an aside, these mobile search results are not unlike "universal search" on the desktop.) See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Microsoft: Live Search Mobile category for past articles.

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Microsoft: SEO Issues
=========================

Microsoft Launches Live Search Webmaster Tools Beta While Developing Version Two – The long expected webmaster support area from Microsoft has arrived. Microsoft Live Search has launched Live Search Webmaster Center and a new "Webmaster Tools" beta as part of the support services. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Microsoft: Live Search SEO category for past articles.

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Microsoft: Searching
=========================

Microsoft Introduces New Live Search Index, Adds Features In Effort To Close ‘Relevancy Gap’ And Improve User Experience – Microsoft is confident that the search engine it’s reintroducing tonight in conjunction with its Searchification event will be a substantial improvement of the current version of Live search. An overview, focus on selected specifics, and some screenshots to illustrate the changes being introduced.

Also see Search Engine Land’s Microsoft: Live Search category for past articles.

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Mobile Search
=========================

Segmenting Local Mobile Search: The Major Players & Mobile Search Types – Expectations of mobile search and local mobile search in particular are rising. As mobile ad networks form, mobile M&A activity heats up and the search engines pour greater attention and resources into their mobile offerings one could say we’re on the cusp of a new mobile era. A look at the types of local mobile search services that have developed and players in each space. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Mobile Search Engines category for past articles.

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Paid Search & Contextual
=======================

Paid Search Back-Checks, Slays Dragons, Asks for Little in Return – Paid search might not seem sexy, but it performs. A little respect for this "all around" player of search marketing. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Search Ads category Paid Search column and for past articles.

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People Search
========================

Surveying The People Search Landscape – Can you imagine trying to sort through billions of web pages without a search engine? Inconceivable! They make it easy and fast to find information. Now how about finding one of the six billion people on the planet. Where’s the Google of people search? As it turns out, an entire industry of people search engines is ramping up. In this series, I’ll be looking at the people search engines: existing ones that are revitalizing, brand new ones that have emerged and yes, whether or not Facebook will be the one to consume them all.

Also see Search Engine Land’s Search Engines: People Search category for past articles.

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Popularity
=======================

Google Top Worldwide Search Engine; Baidu Beats Microsoft – comScore has released new figures looking at the most popular search engines worldwide. Google tops the list, with nearly five times as many searches as nearest competitor Yahoo. But the worldwide list does focus attention on some non-US based search players like Baidu and NHN, which owns Korea’s Naver. It also shows Asia-Pacific as the region with the most searchers and searches happening. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Stats: Popularity category for past articles.

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Privacy
========================

Google Bad On Privacy? Maybe It’s Privacy International’s Report That Sucks – It’s a bad privacy day for Google, with Privacy International first accusing the company of having the worst privacy performance of any internet service company in a study it has just released and then accusing Google of conducting a smear campaign against it. But if you actually read the report, Privacy International itself comes off bad for putting out a haphazard condemnation of Google.

Also see Search Engine Land’s Privacy category for past articles.

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Searching
===================

Search 3.0: The Blended & Vertical Search Revolution – This has been a remarkable year. After years of no real dramatic evolution in search, the third generation finally arrived. Google calls it Universal Search, and I’ve been tending to say "blended search" as a generic name for the change that’s now hit all the major search engines. But in doing the agenda for our upcoming SMX West conference, a better term for what’s going on finally clicked: Search 3.0. In this article, I’ll cover the why and what of Search 3.0, taking in Search 1.0 and 2.0 along the way and touch on how Search 4.0 — personal and social refinement — is on the way. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Searching Land area for more articles on this topic.

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Searching Behavior
===================

Pew/Internet Study Finds Most Americans Get Their Answers From the Internet – A PEW/Internet and American Life study out today finds that the place Americans turn to most for answers is the internet. The study, which surveyed 2,796 Americans, found that 76% have internet access and that 58% turn to the internet when they have questions about things like health, school, careers, and government issues. The project focused on how people use the internet, libraries, and government resources when they need to solve problems and found that those without high-speed internet access (no access or dial-up only) were less satisfied with their ability to get the answers they were seeking. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Stats: Search Behavior category Just Behave column and for past articles.

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Search Marketing Industry, General
================================

Search & Interactive Marketing Associations List – Lee Odden is compiling a list of regional search and interactive marketing associations and is asking for your help. He currently has over 25 on the list, but I am sure there are a lot more. If you know of any he is missing, comment at his blog and let’s help him compile the ultimate list! See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s SEM Industry area for more articles on this topic.

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Search Marketing Industry, Spend Stats
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Online Advertising Continues To Grow: Q3 Worth $5.2 Billion – Online ad revenues recorded 25 percent year-over-year growth for a $5.2 billion dollar performance in the third quarter, according to the IAB. Growth from last quarter was a less impressive 3 percent, however. The Internet is on pace to break $20 billion in ad revenues this year, compared with $16.9 billion for 2006. The first nine months of the year generated $15.2 billion in online advertising. Paid search represents a steady 41 percent of revenues. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Stats category for past articles.

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Search Marketing Tactics
===========================

Doing Keyword Research? Here Are Some Resources To Help! – Search term research is one of the fundamental activities for a successful search marketing campaign. You’ve got to know the words people are using if you want to target them properly. To help, I’ve expanded the Search Term Research section of Search Engine Land to list a variety of resources and tools you can consult. The Search Behavior section also has been updated to list places where search engines generally report on search activity, such as popular trends in searching. Both sections also recap articles we’ve covered on these topics. In this article, a bit more about what’s in both sections, along with the sad decline of the Yahoo Keyword Selector Tool and some alternatives that have come along in its place.

Also see Search Engine Land’s Search Marketing category for past articles.

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SEO / Natural / Unpaid Search: General
===================================

SEO Is Easy? Let’s Look At The Hard 5 Percent – There is a new battle waging, and on one side you have people calling SEO ’stupid easy,’ ‘bullshit,’ ’snake oil’ and so forth. On the other side, you have folks like me taking some pretty serious offence to our livelihood being denigrated by non-SEOs. A large part of the argument is that SEO is 95 percent easy, and it’s the other 5 percent that is what we really get paid for — and that 5 percent is the slimy stuff that makes the web a worse place to be. We’re going to take a look at that 5 percent in this article based on actual work I’ve done for real clients. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s SEO category (and many subcategories) for past articles.

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SEO / Natural / Unpaid Search: Crawling
====================================

Search Engines Unite On Sitemaps Autodiscovery – Last November, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo united to support sitemaps, a standardized method of submitting web pages through feeds to the search engines. Today, the three are now joined by Ask.com in supporting the system and an extension of it called autodiscovery. This is where the major search engines will automatically locate your sitemaps file if the location is listed in a robots.txt file. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s SEO category (and many subcategories) for past articles.

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SEO / Natural / Unpaid Search: Multimedia
======================================

Six Simple Steps To Image Optimization – With the advent of Google Universal Search, Ask 3D and other "blended" search services, images will increasingly be appearing in search results. If you’re not optimizing images on your web site, you’re missing out on capturing some of this increasingly valuable real-estate. Not sure how to optimize images for search engines? Today’s Search Illustrated shows you how to do it simply and quickly. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s SEO category (and many subcategories) for past articles.

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Security
========================

Malware Hits Search Results — Google’s Malware Warnings Not Working? – ComputerWorld reports that Google, along with Yahoo and Live Search have been targeted in a massive attack that puts links leading to malware sites into top search results. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Legal: Security category for past articles.

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Shopping Search & Season
========================

Goodbye Froogle, Hello Google Product Search! – Back in December 2002, Google launched its long expected product and shopping search engine. It was called Froogle, a combination of "frugal" and "Google." Just over four years later, Froogle is finally loses its cutesy name for something more descriptive — to become Google Product Search. It also gains a cleaner interface, as well.

Also see Search Engine Land’s Shopping Search Marketing and Shopping Search Engines categories for past articles.

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Small Business
===================

The SEO of Everyday Pages – There’s a kind of page that shows up on websites that I think of as everyday pages. These are commonly appearing pages that you might see on almost every website, such as the "contact" page, the "about us," the "terms of service" and the "privacy policy." These are pages that I see small business sites not taking advantage of enough. Often, these pages are sadly underutilized from a search engine optimization perspective, with such imaginative titles as "Contact", "About Us," "Terms of Service" and "Privacy Policy." I’ve also see "Glossary," "Directions," and "Frequently Asked Questions," or "FAQ." Considering that a page title is one of the most important elements of a page for SEO, chances are that these pages were overlooked as a possible entryway into those sites from search engines. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Small Is Beautiful column for past articles.

======================
Social Search
======================

The Promise & Reality Of Mixing The Social Graph With Search Engines – I’m having a bad day. Aside from my desktop crashing, we get another spate of "let’s blame SEO" to start my morning off. Robert Scoble uses that theme as a launching pad for a series of videos on how Facebook potentially could be a killer search engine — regardless of the fact he seems to have no clue that "social graph" or social networking mixing has been tried and abandoned with search. Having watched his videos, which have sparked much discussion, I’ll do some debunking, some educating for those who want more history of what’s been done in the area, plus I’ll swing around to that New York Times article today that ascribes super-ranking powers to SEO. Plus, I’ll use the F-word along the way. I said it was a bad day.

Also see Search Engine Land’s Search Engines: Social Search Engines category for past articles.

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Social Media
===================

OpenSocial: Led By Google, Social Networks Band To Take On Facebook - As expected, the much-discussed Google social play turns out to be an alliance with other companies to "open up" social networks and their data to developers. TechCrunch and the New York Times both have early news of an expected announcement tomorrow on how Google, along with partners like Ning, Linked In, Friendster, and others, will introduce a set of common APIs — called OpenSocial — to be used for getting data from and writing applications for social networks. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Search Engines: Social Search Engines category for past articles.

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Social Media Marketing
======================

The Social Media Manual: Read Before You Play – I get so many questions from people about Digg, Propeller, Reddit, Stumbleupon, and other social news sites every day that I decided to write this little "manual" as something to read before you jump in head first into any social site, and to keep by your side as you progress through the ranks. It should not only help you succeed with your social media marketing efforts, but also help you avoid some of the mistakes I’ve made.

Also see Search Engine Land’s Social Media Marketing category and Let’s Get Social column and for past articles.

======================
StumbleUpon
======================

eBay Buys StumbleUpon – As expected, eBay has purchased StumbleUpon for about $75 million. “StumbleUpon is a great fit within our goal of pioneering new communities based on commerce and sustained by trust,” said Michael Buhr, senior director, eBay. “StumbleUpon’s downloadable toolbar provides an engaging and unique experience to its users, but it is the similarities in our approaches to the concept of community that make it such a compelling addition to eBay.” See also:

======================
Video Search
======================

Video Search Challenge Isn’t Speech Recognition, It’s Content Owner Management - "Millions of Videos, and Now a Way to Search Inside Them from the New York Times" is a big giant love story to video search firm Blinkx, suggesting that the idea of finding video content will take a leap through new idea of speech recognition. In reality, it’s not a new idea. It’s been in practice for years. And despite those years, it has failed to transform how we search for video on the web. That’s because speech recognition video search is overrated, especially given the true challenge video search faces — just getting the content centralized in the first place. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Video Search Engines category for past articles.

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Wikipedia
===================

SEO Tips & Tactics From A Wikipedia Insider – I am a Wikipedia administrator, and I specialize in complex investigations. Media professionals and Wikipedia volunteers seldom understand each other. So I’ll illustrate my perspective with an example: let’s have a look at some politicians.

Also see Search Engine Land’s Search Engines: Wikipedia category for past articles.

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Yahoo: Business Issues
=======================

Yahoo’s CEO, Terry Semel, To Be Replaced By Jerry Yang – Terry Semel has stepped down as Yahoo’s CEO. The new CEO is Yahoo’s co-founder, Jerry Yang. With this change, Susan Decker, former executive vice president and head of Advertiser and Publisher Group, is now president. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Yahoo: Business Issues category for past articles.

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Yahoo: China
=======================

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang Grilled By Congress On China, Offers Apology – Jerry Yang, Yahoo’s CEO, and Michael Callahan, Yahoo’s General Counsel, stood before congress to give answers on the information the company provided to China that lead to the jailing of journalist Shi Tao imprisonment. Yang offered a personal apology to Tao’s family today. See also:

=======================
Yahoo: Employees
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Susan Decker, Yahoo’s President, Gets Raise – Salary jumps for Decker with Yahoo promotion from News.com reports that Yahoo president Susan Decker will be getting a pretty nice raise. As Yahoo’s CFO, she made $500,000. Now, as Yahoo’s president, she will be making $815,000. In addition to the $315,000 raise, Decker will also be eligible for a bonus of 150% of her base salary, which comes out to $1.2 million. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Yahoo: Employees category for past articles.

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Yahoo: Flickr
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Flickr Launches Stats: Detailed Overview – Flickr just announced the launch of Flickr Stats for Flickr Pro accounts. Who doesn’t love stats? Now having them on my Flickr account makes me incredibly happy. Here is a detailed look at what Flickr Stats has to offer on the day it launched. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Yahoo: Flickr category for past articles.

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Yahoo: Local & Maps
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Yahoo Local Gets A Sophisticated Makeover – Yahoo is arguably the leader in local search, but others including Google, Microsoft and Yelp have been rapidly gaining. The search engine’s venerable Local site was in need of a refresh, which it has now received. With a redesign partly inspired by the Yahoo OurCity sites in India, the new Yahoo Local features a bolder graphical look that pushes community content even more front and center. Maps are still featured, but not as a central metaphor or visual element and much more in a functional way.

Also see Search Engine Land’s Yahoo: Maps & Local category for past articles.

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Yahoo: Mobile
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Yahoo Go Comes Out Of Beta With Big Global Push – Yahoo Go 2.0 and related mobile oneSearch offerings are coming out of beta this Friday and going into "general availability" in the U.S. While consumers pay no attention to these distinctions – alpha, beta, gamma and so on — it signals Yahoo’s confidence in the product. Simultaneously, nation-specific versions of Go will be released in 13 countries, including Canada, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Spain, United Kingdom, Thailand and Vietnam.

Also see Search Engine Land’s Yahoo: Mobile & Go category for past articles.

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Yahoo: Paid Search
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New Panama Ranking System For Yahoo Ads Launches Today – Today, Yahoo will flip the switch for the new "Marketplace Design" algorithm in the US market, the system commonly known as Panama. Parts of Panama have already gone live in the past few weeks. But throughout today, Yahoo will be rolling out the last piece – a new ranking algorithm and its associated new pricing mechanism. With the new ranking algorithm, Yahoo will move from its long-standing and original bid-to-position model (where those who pay the most rank first) to a system that takes bids, ad quality and other factors into consideration in determining how ads are ranked on search results pages (a system similar to that long used by Google). See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Yahoo: Search Ads category for past articles.

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Yahoo: SEO
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Yahoo Supports New Robots-Nocontent Tag To Block Indexing Within A Page – For over a decade, search engines have supported standards allowing you to prevent pages from being spidered or included within a search index. Today, Yahoo now supports a new twist — a way to flag that part of your page shouldn’t be included in an index. It’s called the robots-nocontent tag. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Yahoo: SEO category for past articles.

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Yahoo: Searching
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Yahoo Upgrades Search Experience, Launches ‘Search Assist’ & Multimedia Content In Results - Most of the pieces have been sneaking out over the past month or so. But today Yahoo is formally announcing a range of search upgrades, more Shortcuts, integration of video and photos directly in search results and Search Assist. See also:

Also see Search Engine Land’s Yahoo: Search category for past articles.

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Yahoo: Other
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Yahoo Takes Beta Label Off New Mail, Adds Features – Yahoo has taken the "beta" label off its new Yahoo Mail service. Here’s an overview from the Yodel Anecdotal blog. Arguably the most interesting aspect of the new features is the capability of sending text messages to mobile phones from Yahoo Mail. See also:

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Going Green
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Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Intel & Others Join Greener Computing Effort – Google announced that it and many other computer and Internet heavyweights have joined together in the global Climate Savers computing initiative launched by the World Wildlife Federation. The idea is to improve the efficiency of computer hardware and data centers so that they require less power and give off less heat. See also:

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Holiday Stuff & Special Logos
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Search Funnies: The April Fool’s 2007 Roundup – April Fools Day was yesterday, and the search engines along with others in the search world, went all out. Here is a roundup of the different pranks played. See also:

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Search In Pictures
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A rundown of search as seen in pictures, from our Search In Pictures column:

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Weddings
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Congratulations, Elisabeth Osmeloski & Matthew Ostrander – Elisabeth Osmeloski is well known within the search marketing industry, especially for having started and run the Search Engine Watch Forums for three years. Today, she tied the knot with Matthew Ostrander. Best wishes from all of us here at Search Engine Land! Pictures of the event. See also:

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Fun, Weird Stuff & Other Things
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If Search Engines Were Frat Houses From Movies – I love search engines. I love comedy movies. So let’s have fun putting the two together. Which search engines are most like some famous movie fraternities? Yes, there is an Animal House of search! See also:

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Other Year End Review Stuff
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The 2007 Paid Links War, In Review, Search Engine Land
Top Google Apps in 2007, Google Operating System
2007 Blog Statistics, ShoeMoney
2007 Metrics, Google Operating System
Our Stats for 2007, ViperChill
adCenter Blog Nostalgia – A Look Back At 2007, adCenter Blog
The Year in Launches (2007 Edition), TechCrunch
Top 10 New Google Earth Features 2007, Google Earth Blog
This Year in Search, Search Engine Watch
2008 is the Year of the Frog -SEO by the SEA, SEO By The Sea
Top 50 Search and Social Media Happenings for 2007, www.10e20.com
Inside AdSense: A look back at 2007, Inside AdSense
New Year’s Resolutions for 2008 : SEO Book.com, SEO Book
Official Google Blog: This year of Google blogging, Official Google Blog
The Most Popular Marketing Pilgrim Stories of 2007, Marketing Pilgrim
Big List of 2008 Prediction & Resolution Posts, Small Business SEM
SEM Predictions for 2008 | Search Marketing Standard Blog, Search Marketing Standard
Top 10 9 YouTube Videos Of 2007, InsideGoogle
Best Internet Marketing Blog Posts of 2007, Tamar Weinberg

Apologies to those that may have been left off or those yet to come — feel free to drop links in the comments box below!

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Search Engine Land News
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Search Engine Land Celebrates Its First Birthday! – Happy Birthday to us! Today, Search Engine Land officially turns one year old. Below, I wanted to share some thanks to all those who’ve helped make it such a successful year, and I’m going to save the in-depth "what have we achieved" statistics for sharing for January, when the entire 2007 calendar year has passed. But I will highlight a few stats now. See also: