SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 18, 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:

• In the Trenches, April 18, 2008
  In The Trenches is a weekly spotlight of tips, tricks, and news about the tools search engine marketing professionals use to give them a leg up on the competition. Today: News from the search engines, today’s in-depth look, “Two Tweak Tools That Work” and this week’s free tips and…
• Search in Pictures: Yahoo! Bomb, iGoogle Artcafe & Yahoo Exec Faceball
  In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more….
• The Midwest Earthquake & Search Engine Responses
  So the Midwest of the US was rocked by an unusual 5.2 earthquake. Looking at Google Trends, which shows popular recent queries, I can see people immediately hit the search engines with queries like illinois earthquake, chicago earthquake and midwest earthquake. So how did the search engines do? Especially…
• Google Poised To Become Top UK Marketing Vehicle, New Report Shows Breakdown Of UK Search Spend
  In its Q1 earnings report yesterday, Google announced that UK revenues were $803 million (£407 million), which was part of overall revenues from outside the US of $2.65 billion or 51% of Q1 total revenues for Google. These figures prompted an item on a BBC blog to project that Google…
• Yahoo’s New Minimum Bid Prices Now Live: Advertisers Impacted
  As expected, Yahoo announced that the new minimum bids for advertisers may no longer be the $0.10, they once were. Yahoo said that your new “minimum bids can be lower or higher than $.10.” Note, the content network’s minimum bids will remain at $0.10, at least for the time being,…
• Google Video Redesigns & More Video Tips
  Google Video has undergone yet another redesign. Both Google Blogoscoped and Google Operating System have detailed coverage with screen shots of the new design and how it compared to the old design. Tools For Your Video Career by Duncan at TechCrunch has an outstanding rundown on tools you can use…
• Human Hardware: How Many Friends Can We Have Online?
  In the last column, I introduced British evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar’s theory that we have cognitive limits to the number of social relationships we can maintain, and the importance of social grooming in all primates, including humans. Just as a quick recap, based on the relative size of our…
• Microsoft Buys Travel Search Site Farecast
  Travel search site Farecast was rumored to be a takeover target recently and the CEO has confirmed that the site has indeed been acquired by Microsoft. TechCrunch, citing John Cook at the Seattle PI, says the deal was worth something in the $100-$115 million range….
• Please Take Search Engine Land’s Audience Survey
  We’ve got a special request of our Search Engine Land visitors and SearchCap newsletter readers. Take our audience survey! Please? If helping us keep the lights on isn’t enough of an incentive, we’ll toss in a chance to win a ticket in for Search Marketing Expo – SMX Advanced in…

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Microsoft switches personalised live.com homepage to my.live.com, LiveSide
• 9 reasons to archive, Official Gmail Blog

Business Issues

• Google CEO says Nice to be working with Yahoo, Reuters
• AOL planning to invade China, The INQUIRER
• ComScore Shares Slip 8% After Google Announcement, Wall Street Journal
• How Google Has Screwed Up the MySpace Deal, Wired
• Pageflakes Acquisition Confirmed, TechCrunch
• Secret Merger Talks Between Technorati And b5media Blow Up, TechCrunch

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google Maps – Missing Phone numbers now showing up, Mike Blumenthal
• New ways to beat traffic with Google Maps, Google LatLong
• Touch down on the Earth’s surface with Street View, Google LatLong
• Android Developers Have Risen to the Challenge, Android Developers Blog
• Google Street View Cars Spotted in Italy, Google Blogoscoped
• Rise and Shine!, Google LatLong

Microhoo

• Microsoft hires firm to lobby on proposed Yahoo takeover, The Associated Press

Paid Search & Contextual

• Announcement: Sandbox Maintenance on Monday – adCenter API, adcentercommunity.com
• Are You Hurting Your Keywords’ Performance? Without a Great Account Structure You Just Might Be!, PPC Hero
• Google Pays AdSense Publishers Larger Share Overall, Search Engine Roundtable
• Improvements to AdWords Conversion Tracking, Inside AdWords
• Yahoo Ad Test on Google Continues, Search Engine Roundtable

Searching

• Google’s Special China Page and Its Helper Cartoon, Google Blogoscoped
• New search.live.com homepage, LiveSide
• Twing Launches New Search Technology, altsearchengines.com
• Visual, Mobile Search Engine Coming to iPhones in Japan, Search Engine Watch Blog
• We’ve revamped News Search!, Live Search

SEM Industry

• AdTech San Francisco 2008 Coverage Recap, BruceClay.com
• Google Slaughters Wall & Inman, But Amazon Survives, seoroi.com
• Rebecca Lieb Leaves Post as ClickZ Editor-in-Chief, ClickZ
• Want to know how Live Search is evolving?, Live Search
• Am I a Sphinn troll now?, Andrew R H Girdwood
• hakia.com Hosts the NY Semantic Web Meetup, Hakia Blog
• New SEMPO Chairperson Dana Todd Has Big Dreams for Organization, Search Engine Watch Blog

SEO & SEM

• How to Optimize for Google – Part 1 of 3, Stepforth
• Making the Perfect SEO / SEM Pitch, www.allthingssem.com
• Are You Following Google’s Marketing Strategy?, SEO Book
• Google Webmaster Tools Delists All Verified Sites?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Same-Site Duplicate Pages at Different URLs, SEO By The Sea
• SEO Logo – What Should It Tell Your Customer?, SEO Smarty
• SEOs Should Focus on Conversions, Stone Temple
• Wikipedia Documents Fake Syndication Format, Workbench

Social Media

• GroupTweet: Make Your Twitter Time Productive, Rev2.org
• Ad Network for Social Media Sites, Marketing Pilgrim
• Social Media Marketing Strategies for Recruiters White Paper, Site Visibility

Video, Music & Image Search

• YouTube Policy Enforcement Changes, YouTube
• Dig Our Videos? Digg Our Videos!, Yahoo! Video Blog
• YouTube’s filtering issues still not ‘moot’, News.com

Web Analytics

• Woopra: Website Analytics Can Be Absolutely Beautiful, Performancing.com

Other Items

• Here’s to Tom Lehrer, elemental geek, Official Google Blog
• Working together to fight malware, Official Google Blog
• Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: April 18, 2008, Search Engine Roundtable

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

• Kevin Rose Offers Insight into Digg Algorithm
• Social Media for Dummies: Stop Selling and Start Giving
• Social Media Analytics: How to Track and Measure it
• Help! I’ve Been SEO Sabotaged!
• Direct Marketing vs Social Media Marketing
• Google Dumping “Don’t Be Evil” as a Company Motto?
• SEO is Not Free Traffic
• Online Reputation Management Proposals: A Guide
• Get Paid Links from the US Olympic Team
• A Method To Check, You Target the Right Keywords
• Are You a Marketer or an Innovator?
• Is the BBC spamming Sphinn?
• Your Site’s Manifest Linking Destiny
• Could Mixx Be the Next Digg?
• How to really make friends and influence people online
• Authority, Spheres of Influence, and Influence Ripples
• Use the Forum my young SEO Jedi
• Hey Web Site Visitor, I Love to Turn You On
• Google AdWords and ASCII Art : 50% Increase in Click Thrus
• Google Thinks YOU Are a Black Hat SEO. Should You Trust Them?