SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 5, 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:

• Yahoo Search Marketing To Shorten Ad Descriptions In June
  Yahoo has announced that they will be shortening the length of search ad descriptions from a maximum of 190 characters to 75 characters. Starting in May 2007, Yahoo Search Marketing will require you to fill out a "short description" that would be the default ad text source. In June 2007,…
• Smarter’s Product Video Reviews
  Smarter’s video product reviews are a very entertaining and useful product research tool. As Smarter’s product evangelist Paul Willmes said, "the reviews are by people who actually own [the product] which makes it more real. It makes the opinion more valuable, like a friend giving you advice.”…
• Google AdWords Adds Impression Share Metric
  Vinny Lingham reports finding a new metric on his Google AdWords console named Impression Share. Impression Share is a statistic available at both the campaign and account level:…
• SEO Is Easy? Let’s Look At The Hard 5 Percent
  The SEO world has always had its supporters and its detractors, and it’s never made a great deal of difference. The bigger battles often waged within the community between the whitehats and blackhats. The whitehats would rant and rave about how the blackhats could get clients in trouble and…
• AdSense Units Get Bigger Google Logo
  A fresh, new look for AdSense ads from Google’s Inside AdSense blog makes it official. The new AdSense displays that have been in testing from last month, with the "Ads by Google" much more prominent in the lower right-hand corner? They’re here to stay….
• Cost Of Protecting GOOG Chief: $1/2 Million
  Google’s top execs taking salaries of only $1 is old news. The cost of protecting them, especially Google CEO Eric Schmidt, is considerably more. Over half a million dollars, $532,755 to be exact, to protect Schmidt. That’s according to company’s latest financial filings, reports the New York Times….
• Free Page Creator Tools From The Big Three: Trash or Treasure?
  Have a small business in need of a website, but no budget for professional design services? Yahoo, Google and Microsoft all offer free small business site creation tools that can help you develop a professional online presence. Keep reading for an in-depth review of what Office Live Basics, Google…
• WSJ Covers Ask.com’s "Information Revolution" Ad Campaign
  Ask.Com’s ‘Revolt’ Risks Costly Clicks from the Wall Street Journal weighs in on the Ask.com guerrilla marketing campaign we covered last month, especially focusing on the negative comments that have appeared on the associated web site. The article also highlighting the television commercials now airing. I’ve seen these myself…
• 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…
• Surveys: SEM, Online Marketing And Advertiser Attitudes
  A trio of advertiser and merchant-related surveys bubbled up (or bubbled up to me via an email from Danny) earlier today. They all in one way or another discuss search marketing and/or traffic driving strategies and online spending. There’s a lot of interesting data here for consumption. There are varying…
• DoubleClick Establishing Nasdaq-Like Ad Exchange
  The New York Times is reporting that DoubleClick is setting up an auction-based ad exchange, a "mix of eBay and Sabre, the airline reservations system that travel agents use." "The service will let advertisers see information about what competitors bid for particular ads, in the same way that eBay shows…
• Yahoo Testing Alpha (Beta) Multi Search
  Spotted via Micro Persuasion and Digital Inspiration, Yahoo’s just launched Alpha (in beta version, natch). Both of the aforementioned blogs call Alpha a customized search engine similar to Google Custom Search Engine, but Alpha is really more of a multi-search tool that submits your query to multiple sources and aggregates…

Search News Headlines From Elsewhere

Applications & Portal Features

• Brazil: Google Steps Up Orkut Oversight, New York Times

Business Issues

• Local.com Crows: $35 RPM, John Battelle
• VIDEO TOUR: IAC’s new headquarters, Valleywag

Local & Mobile

• Yahoo redesigns site with eye to foreclosures, Bloomberg
• Mini Web Sites Target Users of Mobile Phones, Wall Street Journal
• The 85 Piece Mobile Search Tool Kit, Read/WriteWeb
• Craigslist’s Dirty Little Secret, Compete Blog

Paid Search & Contextual

• New Google Metric: Impression Share, Vinny Lingham
• Inside Google’s New Pay Per Action for Advertisers, Search Engine Guide

SEM Industry

• Break Out of Your SEO Conference Comfort Zone, Sugarrae
• Optimize Your Schedule for SES NY, Search Engine Watch
• Yahoo! at SES NY, 2007, Yahoo Search Marketing Blog
• Interview With Search Marketing Standard Editor, Andrey Milyan, V7N
• Budget Optimization in Search-Based Advertising Auctions, ResourceShelf
• Hey Mum I’m gonna be on Telly, Threadwatch
• iProspect Founder Takes New Global Role, ClickZ

SEO & SEM

• Weather Report: Yahoo! Search Index Update & SES Conference Speakers, Yahoo Search Blog
• Engaging Customers to Say ‘I Love You’ Back, Search Engine Watch
• Parasite Hosting Now Dominating Spam Results, SEOmoz
• Tagging Content On Webpages, Print, and Television, with Yahoo’s Y!Q, SEO By The Sea
• 9 Step Process for Getting Authoritative Links, Search Engine Watch Blog

Social Media

• The State of the Live Web, April 2007, Technorati
• Netscape Removes Homepage Stories Counts, Pronet Advertising
• I’m a Digger, Now What?, Search Engine Roundtable

Video & Image Search

• Google & UCSD Work On Improve Image Search, Threadwatch
• Autonomy: Video Copyright Protection Search Service, John Battelle

Other Vertical Search

• Cognition Launches New Linguistic Search Engine, Information Today
• Google News Personalization, SEO By The Sea
• How to use the "product_type" attribute, Google Base Blog
• Real Time Info: TrafficLand Prepares to Launch Version 3.0, ResourceShelf
• Homes, not just homepages, Official Google Blog

Other Stuff

• Google China’s Unfiltered Related Searches, Google Operating System
• GOOGLE MAPS: A tourist’s guide to the Googleplex, Valleywag
• Podcast: Rush Hour Episode 8, Pronet Advertising
• Podcast: Google’s New My Maps Service; Thailand Says NoTube To YouTube & More!, Daily SearchCast