SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 20, 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:

• SES San Jose Coverage Roundup – August 20, 2007
  Below is a roundup of all the coverage I was able to find throughout the day of the SES San Jose conference. This coverage is for the first day of SES, taking place on August 20, 2007….
• Yahoo Search Marketing To Add PayPal Funding, Ad Creation Tools & Quality Alerts
  David Pann, the vice president, Marketplace Design & Matching, Yahoo, announced this morning at SES, several new features coming to Yahoo Search Marketing on August 28th. They include: Pay for your ads via PayPal. The ability to manage more ads, more quickly through an easier to use interface. New email…
• Microsoft Content Ads To Open To All US Advertisers August 29
  Microsoft just announced that ContentAds will be open to all US advertisers on August 29th. Advertisers who have not yet participated in the ContentAds program will automatically be opted into the network on that date. So if you do not want your ads to run on Microsoft’s content network, which…
• Yahoo Audio Search Adds Inline Previews
  The Yahoo Search Blog announced they have added inline audio samples to their audio search feature. So now when you do a search on free bird, you can listen to a quick sample before clicking for more….
• comScore Introduces Expanded U.S., Global Search Measurement And Methodology
  The analytics firm is expanding its core search metrics product, qSearch, in a number of ways that the company says will make the measurement of search volumes and market share more accurate than it was previously. According to James Lamberti, SVP Search and Media at comScore, the expansion of the…
• What Influences Online Searches?
  iProspect conducted a survey on Offline Channel Influence on Online Search Behavior Study. In short, what influences a user to conduct an online search? The study found that offline channels prompt two-thirds of online search. 37% said a television ad encouraged them to conduct a search, 36% said word-of-mouth initiated…
• Aggressively Seeking Links: How Much Is Too Much?
  When it comes to link building, how much is too much? How fast is too fast? Neither of these questions would have been asked in 1997, because their was no such thing as too fast or too much. But it isn’t 1997 anymore is it? And since link development…
• The Good, The Bad, & The Incredible Usefulness Of User-Generated Content
  Here’s a callout to the community! From all of us who operate locally focused sites, thanks are in order to the users who write reviews about local businesses such that others can make more informed decisions. User-generated reviews, as we have mentioned in past columns, are not a ‘silver…

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• What’s on your personalized News page?, Google News Blog
• XSS Hole In Google Apps Is "Expected Behavior", ha.ckers.org
• Rumor: Was the Gdrive Release Canceled?, Google Blogoscoped
• Google-powered Questions, Google Blogoscoped
• GrandCentral: One Number For Life. Or Per Year. Maybe, TroySchneider.com

Business Issues

• Facebook Could Challenge Google And Become The Remote Control For The Web, InformationWeek
• Google’s growth has come at a price, Mercury News
• Ad Growth for AOL Called Vital to a Remake, New York Times
• Facebook surfers cost their bosses billions, Reuters
• Google reveals stake in Chinese social Web Tianya, Reuters
• Yahoo’s Exec Departures: Brain Drain or Natural Exodus?, ClickZ

Conferences

• 50 Things I Love About Search Conferences, SEOmoz
• Join us at cool SES San Jose – it’ll be hot!, Official Google Webmaster Central Blog
• SES Women’s Luncheon Sponsored by One of Their Biggest Fans, Cre8PC
• Things We Hate About Search Conferences, SEOmoz
• SMX Conference Series Expanding to Australia in 2008, Search Marketing Expo Blog

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Creating Local Business Ads with the AdWords API, AdWords API Blog
• Google Book Search in Google Earth, Google LatLong

Link Building

• How to: Buy Links Without Being Called a Spammer, SEO Book

Paid Search & Contextual

• How Google AdSense Cannibalizes Content Based Business Models, SEO Book
• Modify Your Campaigns tools phasing out next week, Inside AdWords
• Ad Testing, Jonathan Mendez’s Blog
• Ads Are Content: It Doesn’t Pay to Separate Church and State : SEO Book.com, SEO Book
• Microsoft to Fix adCenter Bulk Import Draft Problem, Search Engine Roundtable

Searching

• The King: Dead and Well on Ask.com, Ask.com Blog
• Man vs. Machine, Fast Company
• Making Sense of Search Queries by Using Context, SEO By The Sea
• Google China Blog Search Goes Live, Google Blogoscoped
• Welcome Home to Our New Homepage!, Askville Blog

SEM Industry

• Search Engine Marketers Fantasy Football Challenge, MarketingShift
• Moving to a new office in September, johnmu.com
• Search Pulse Airing Live at SES Tuesday at 6pm, Search Engine Roundtable

SEO & SEM

• Tis the Season to Start Optimizing for the Holidays, Search Engine Guide
• Finally! The Sandbox Debate is DEAD and the SEO Guru Killed it., Bob Massa
• 5 Reasons To Use a Folder Name URL Structure, SEOptimise
• Google Updates Directory After 19 Months, Search Engine Roundtable
• New Tool: Backlink Anchor Text Analysis, SEOmoz
• Socionomics & The Wave Principal, SEO Book

Social Media

• Google Working on Social Network Aggregator, Carnage4Life
• Lifting Corporate Fingerprints From the Editing of Wikipedia, New York Times
• Why I hit the Digg Homepage on a Daily Basis, ViperChill

Other Items

• Little Google Now Has A Sister, InsideGoogle
• It’s not journalism, Los Angeles Times
• Portfolio: A New Business Magazine from Conde Nast, Offers Original Content, Research Databases, and More, ResourceShelf
• 2007 Edition of the World Population Datasheet and Related Documents, ResourceShelf

Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:

• Ippon Blog Plagiarism With Moves Like A Judo Blackbelt
• Big-Time Black Hat – Mike Grehan Interviews fantomaster ::
• Let Barry Schwartz Do The Readings For You!
• Welcome John Mueller Newest Googler Helping Webmasters
• UK IAB, DMA Charter – What’s A Search Engine Marketing Company?
• 5 Must Attend Sessions at SES San Jose 2007
• How I went from 0 – 20,000 Unique Visitors in 1 day.
• Loyal Digital Point Member Gets Tattoo
• Buy Links Without Being Called a Spammer
• Visualizing Google SEO with Play-Doh
• Who’s Spinning Wikipedia?
• Copywriting – 31 tips