SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 16, 2008

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

From Search Engine Land:

• Google Drops IMAP Support? Gmail & Google Apps Stops Functioning
  It appears that Google is having major issues with their email server. In the past 15 minutes, I received a few phones, tons of twits and found a fast growing Google Groups thread about Google removing IMAP from their email settings options. This seems to be a major issue, where…
• Google Website Optimizer Steps Out Of The AdWords Box: Open To All Users & Urchin 6.0 Comes Out Of Beta
  Google has announced that AdWords is no longer a requirement for Website Optimizer. In fact, you can now go to google.com/websiteoptimizer and register, for free, to use Website Optimizer, even if you do not have an AdWords account. Now, you can use Website Optimizer to not just A/B test your…
• Facebook Adds Lexicon And “Friend Feed” Style Outside Activity Alerts
  Facebook hasn’t yet added Web search but it is allowing users to import content from third-party sites. Users are now permitted to import stories and content (into their mini-feeds) from a handful of sites: Flickr, Yelp, Picasa, and del.icio.us to start with, Digg and others to come. The intention is…
• Microsoft Launches Live Search News
  Microsoft hits back at Google with Live Search News from News.com reports Microsoft has launched Live Search News. Live Search News takes a more linear view of news, when you compare it to the Google News or Yahoo News home pages. Live Search News looks more like a Techmeme style…
• comScore: New Google High, New Yahoo & Microsoft Lows, Though Both Rise In Raw Searches
  Continuing from previous search stats from Hitwise and Compete, comScore is now out with search engine share in the United States for March 2008. Similar to Hitwise, Google hits a new high while Microsoft and Yahoo hit new lows. But in terms of raw searches, Yahoo and Microsoft showed…
• Cuill Gets $25 Million In VC Funding
  Cuill, the stealth search startup backed by former Google, AltaVista and IBM search experts, has completed a second round of funding to the tune of $25 million. The round was led by Madrone Capital Partners and follows on a first round of $8 million from Tugboat Ventures and Greylock Partners….

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Cloud File Services Springing Up Everywhere, But Where’s My GDrive?, TechCrunch
• Google’s Ajax APIs, SEOmoz
• Announcing Google SketchUp 3D Basecamp 2008, Official Google SketchUp Blog
• Gmail Feature Request: Auto-Delete Spam If Spam Score Greater Than, Barry Schwartz
• WSJ.com In For a Major Redesign; Starts With Some Sections, paidContent.org

Business Issues

• Google In The Hot Seat, Forbes
• Lawmakers complain that Google ‘gamed’ auction, Yahoo! News
• Microsoft Completes Acquisition of Danger, Incorporates Company Into Premium Mobile Experiences Group, Microsoft.com
• Former Zillow manager takes on MySpace, MTV and more with video startup, Seattle Times Newspaper Blog
• FTC Urged to Limit Behavioral Advertising, eWeek
• Net.Finance 2008: Jon Kaplan of Google – YouTube and Financial Services , David Dalka

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google Earth 4.3 First Impressions and Screenshots, Google Earth Blog
• Google Transit coming to L.A., Los Angeles Times
• Google Transit’s early bird Earth Day launch, Google LatLong
• Introducing Google Earth 4.3, Google LatLong
• Now available: orkut on your mobile phone, Official Google Mobile Blog
• Terradex receives Environmental Achievement Award, Google LatLong

Link Building

• Why You HAVE to Buy Links – And What to Do About It, Link Building Best Practices

Paid Search & Contextual

• The report of these link units is not exaggerated, Inside AdSense
• Ad Copy Testing: Systematically Improving CTR – adCenter Advertiser, adcentercommunity.com
• Associating Search Ads with Links Instead of Keywords, SEO By The Sea
• Lycos Teams with Click Forensics to Improve Pay Per Click Traffic Quality, Lycos
• Need More Traffic? Stop thinking so hard and review your website for new keywords, PPC Hero
• So how are your AdSense link units performing?, JenSense
• Yahoo’s New Minimum Bids Now Live, Search Engine Roundtable
• YouTube Partner Program travels to Japan, Australia, Ireland, YouTube Blog

Searching

• Futuresearch: Watch This Space, BruceClay.com
• Google Book Search on the rise, Hitwise Intelligence
• Your Chance Of Becoming A Mahalo Millionaire With Mahalo Idol, TechCrunch
• Cognition Announces the Commercial Release of Its Semantic Natural Language Processing (NLP) Technology, Yahoo!Finance
• Ecocho Means Well, I’m Sure, TechCrunch
• Job search Realmatch getting ready to relaunch!, altsearchengines.com
• Northern Light Announces First Business Search Engine With Integrated "Meaning Extraction" Capabilities, Northernlight.com
• The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly side of Web Search, Hakia Blog
• Tracking the Techmeme newcomers, WinExtra
• Using Google Alerts WebProNews Videos, WebProNews

SEM Industry

• $10,000 SEJ Guest Blog Competition : Extended Deadline, Search Engine Journal
• Microsoft Plays Both Sides Of The Ad Game, Forbes

SEO & SEM

• Conversational Thoughts on SEO as a PR Tool, Online Marketing Blog
• Content is King, Baby!, SEOmoz
• Google Says I’m "High Quality", 550 Subscribers, La Presse Article and other Milestones, SEO ROI
• Hosting Company Touting Server Speed As "Intrinsically Linked" To SEO, Search Engine Roundtable
• Major Google UK Search Changes? ‘Dewey’ Crosses The Pond, Search Engine Roundtable
• New Wave of Google Sitelinks Given to Sites, Search Engine Roundtable
• SEO Video Subdomain Clean Up, SEO Book

Social Media

• Online Marketing Tips: Social Media Types Video (Part 1) , Search Marketing Gurus
• ExitReality Turns Social Network Profiles Into 3D Spaces, TechCrunch
• Six Apart wrestles the social-media dragon, News.com
• The Next Generation of Social Media Experts, Social Media Explorer
• Why your social media marketing attempts fail, Jennifer Slegg

Video, Music & Image Search

• Beyond the Pre-Roll: That State of Online Video, BruceClay.com
• Announcing the release of Picasa 2.7 for Linux, Google Photos Blog
• Chinese Photo Site Tuyuan May Do Facial Recognition. Or It May Just Put Boxes Around People’s Heads, TechCrunch
• Google Reader To Support Flickr Videos ‘Shortly’, Search Engine Roundtable
• Life at Yahoo! Video, Yahoo! Video Blog
• PicLens improves image search, Pandia
• PluggedIn Wants to be Hulu For Music Videos, TechCrunch

Web Analytics

• Stats: Lies, damn lies, and RSS subscriber figures, Valleywag

Other Items

• The engineer Google doesn’t want you to see, Valleywag

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

• Google Diving into Indexing the Deep Web
• Time to Refocus on Your Content
• How Should You Measure the Success of your SEO?
• The Power Of Being Everywhere Illusion
• 10 Commandments of Business Blogging
• Kevin Rose Offers Insight into Digg Algorithm
• The Definitive List of Resources for Keyword Analysis
• A Problem with StumbleUpon?
• How to Be a Copywriting Genius: The Brilliantly Sneaky Trick You Must Learn
• Advice for Managing Negative Reviews of Small Businesses
• Some great reasons why big brands don’t have good SEO
• The Thrill Seeker vs. the Bookworm
• Geoblogging – How to Geotag Your Blog
• “Psst…Hey mister…Wanna buy a .EDU subdomain?” – Linkadage
• Search Marketing Professionals Shortage & What Your Company Needs to Know
• What Makes a Great Company Blog?