SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 19, 2007

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 Offers "Queryless Search" & Personalized Recommendations
  Google is rolling out two features today that subtly but meaningfully enhance the level of personalization offered to anyone with a Google account. And while they’re tied to your search behavior, they don’t directly alter the standard search results you see, even if you’ve enabled personalization by searching while signed…
• StumbleUpon Acquired By eBay: "Just Rumors," Says Founder
  The blogosphere is abuzz with rumors that eBay is acquiring StumbleUpon, but they’re "just rumors," Garrett Camp, one of StumbleUpon’s founders just told me on the phone. "There have been rumors before and that’s what they are now," Camp said. Of course, if the company is in play, Camp would…
• EU Group May Serve Google With Letter Over Data Retention Policies
  Google might be receiving a letter from the European Union’s Article 29 Data Protection Working Party relating to the company’s data retention policies. What’s in the letter — if there are concerns, requests, demands — is unknown at this point. No one yet seems to have a copy of the…
• Yahoo Sued For Allegedly Helping Jail Wang Xiaoning
  Chinese couple sues Yahoo for man’s imprisonment from Reuters reports that Wang Xiaoning and his wife Yu Ling have sued Yahoo in the U.S. District Court for Northern California for allegedly helping the Chinese government prosecute Wang Xiaoning. The filing said that Xiaoning was in custody, he was "subjected to…
• Experian Acquires Hitwise For $240 Million
  Experian has acquired Hitwise for about $240 million. Experian posted and Hitwise posted their respective press releases on the announcement….
• Click Fraud On The Rise, Says Click Forensics
  Click Forensics, the company that maintains the Click Fraud Index, a network that monitors and reports on data gathered from more than 3,500 online advertisers and their agencies, has released its most recent quarterly report on click fraud. The company found that the overall industry average click fraud rate was…
• American Blinds Suit Against Google Over Trademarks To Go To Trial
  Judge won’t dismiss Google trademark suit from Reuters reports that the long-standing lawsuit over keywords linked to trademarked terms filed by American Blinds against Google will continue to trial. Google’s request for summary judgment has been denied. Google’s won in two similar suits within the US. Courtesy of Gary…
• QueryCAT - Search FAQs
  QueryCat is a search engine that is designed to search frequently asked questions, and they claim to have the largest database of these, by using the Alexa web crawler. They have apparently indexed over 2 million questions and answers (though this information isn’t on the website) which is a fair…
• Google Webmaster Central Provides More Detailed Anchor Text Reporting
  Vanessa Fox of Google Webmaster Central announced an upgrade to their anchor text reports. Anchor text reporting was added last month, as Danny’s Google Now Reporting Anchor Text Phrases article covers. In that, he had some wish list items. The new features include some of those and other changes:…
• Fifty Questions You Need Answered Before Starting Your SEO Campaign
  An online business owner basically has two choices when it comes to their website marketing efforts. They can outsource it or they can do it in-house. Both of these options bring a number of secondary options to choose from and its up to the business owner to do what…
• Judy’s Book Launches ‘CouponLooker’ Search Engine
  Judy’s Book, which has gone through a very interesting and very public change in its business model – from local directory with reviews to shopping site – has now launched a search engine for deals and coupons: CouponLooker.com. It seeks to be an aggregator of deals online to enable people…
• 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 losing its cutesy name for something more descriptive — to become Google Product Search. It will also…

Search News Headlines From Elsewhere

Applications & Portal Features

• Gmail Team Accidentally Disables Batch of Accounts, Search Engine Roundtable

Business Issues

• Microsoft remains in Google’s and Yahoo’s shadow, CNN Money
• Google’s Spending Draws Investor Scrutiny as Sales, Profit Slow, Bloomberg.com
• Google sued for hyperlink patent infringement, Google Watch

Local, Maps & Mobile

• v2.78: Go ahead, Scroll your mouse wheels & encode your polygons!, Google Maps API Blog

Paid Search & Contextual

• Microsoft’s adCenter Quality Score Update Hurting PPC Relevancy?, Search Engine Roundtable
• How Google Killed Affiliate Marketing, SEO Book
• Google AdSense on Traffic Exchange Programs: We Don’t Recommend Them, Search Engine Roundtable

SEM Industry

• SEM No Longer A Boys Club?, Daggle.com
• Women of Internet Marketing Wednesday Part 16, Search Marketing Gurus
• SEMPO Institute Launches Advanced Program, Web Analytics Blog
• SES New York 2007 Recap – shoe$ style, ShoeMoney
• Newspapers, Yahoo shifting ad platform, San Francisco Chronicle

SEO & SEM

• Is Your Developer SEO Compatible?, Search Marketing Standard
• Does Yahoo Filter SERPs for Social Media Criticizing Yahoo?, AIM Clear Blog
• Blogging to Gain Back Links, Search Engine Watch
• The SEO Playbook – Welcome to the Rabbit Hole Alice, Stuntdubl
• The Page Bloat Disease & Why You Should Eliminate Extraneous Pages, SEOmoz
• Robots.txt help the search engines learn all about your website, Site Pro News
• 4 Strategies for Optimizing Name Tags, Jonathan Mendez’s Blog

Social Media

• Optimizing your Blog for Google Blogsearch, Bruceclay.com
• Automatically Posting Twitter Message From Your Blog’s RSS Feed, Cartoon Barry
• Yahoo exec: We must improve social net standing, InfoWorld
• Use Social Media Arbitrage to Drive Traffic with StumbleUpon, Pick The Brain

Video, Audio & Image Search

• YouTube to split revenues with users, Variety.com (old I think)
• Yahoo to face the music in China, IT Week
• Blinkx offers search short-cut for TV shows, News.com
• YouTube Expands Demographic Data Reporting, MarketingVOX

Other Stuff

• Exclusive: MySpace News Launches Thursday, TechCrunch
• 11 Ways to Search Without Google, PC Magazine
• Podcast: Grown Up Google Renames Froogle To Google Product Search; Looking For Coupons; Google Taking On StumbleUpon & More!, Daily SearchCast