SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 3, 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:

• Search in Pictures: Twitter Tanning, Google Camping, Yahoo Biking
  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….
• Google Universal Search Means Looking For Raccoons Is No Longer Family Friendly
  A reader tipped me off to this. Search for raccoon, and Google Universal Search puts some pictures up at the top of the page: See it? Third one over? I didn’t know a dog and a raccoon could, well……
• Search Wikia Gets Open Source Categorization Software
  Hot on the heels of last week’s acquisition of the Grub open source crawler technology, Wikia announced today that Intellisophic has agreed to make its categorization software available via open source in conjunction with the Search Wikia project. From the press release:…
• Google Building Out Non-US Maps Data With Users
  Brady Forrest at O’Reilly Radar reports on Google’s GPS-based “crowdsourcing” strategy to get local data on Maps outside the US (specifically in India). While Google has enormous amounts of data for the US and EU, in selected countries there’s much less data to plot on Maps. Accordingly Google is relying…
• Searcharazzi: Forget the GPhone, we want the new GCar
  Or at least Google license plates. You might remember the English bloke who tried to sell some plates for tens of thousands in 2005. Well, this Swedish guy has most certainly one-upped anyone else out there with his brand spanking new Google license plates on what looks like a…
• AdSense For Domains Opt Out Coming To AdWords Advertisers
  I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable that Google has said they will be allowing AdWords advertisers to opt out of the AdSense for Domains product. I quoted AdWordsAdvisors2 from a WebmasterWorld thread as saying: We are working on making it simpler for advertisers who don’t want to show on…
• Building Ask’s Traffic: It’s The Toolbar, Stupid!
  Can Zwinky Save Ask? from the New York Times reports that the real winner in growing Ask.com’s search volume growth is their FunWebProducts division. The division launched a product named Zwinky.com that enables people to create avatars of themselves online. They then place these avatars throughout their social network pages….
• Ask’s Michael Ferguson: Optimize For Content Rich SERPs
  This week kicks off the first of our guest writers on Just Behave. This week, I’m pleased to welcome Michael Ferguson from Ask.com. Michael is senior user experience analyst for Ask.com, looking at how people seek, acquire, and act on information. He informs product development with user context and…
• Answers.com Loses Significant Google Traffic Despite Google Definition Links
  Pretty amazing — Answers.com has issued a press release to warn that its search traffic is down 28 percent due to "a search engine algorithmic adjustment by Google." It raises lots of issues — how dependent should you be on search traffic; how the "definitions" links that Answers.com has from…

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Your Privacy Is An Illusion: Google tells hacked Gmail users to wait it out, Valleywag
• Yahoo!’s bet on Hadoop, radar.oreilly.com
• Google Mashup Editor, Read/Write Web

Business Issues

• LookSmart Reports Second Quarter 2007 Results, SEC
• Yahoo! Research Loves New York, Yahoo! Research
• How To Beat Google To Tech Talent, Forbes
• Yahoo expands to Champaign, Chicago Tribune

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Yelp API Released, Techcrunch
• Google, EarthLink San Francisco WiFi project on hold, MarketWatch
• New Terrain and Imagery in Google Earth/Maps – July 27th, Google Earth Blog
• Local Business Search Engine Kudzu.com Wins Telly Awards, Bill Hartzer
• Realogy to post listings on Yahoo, CNN Money
• Enhance Your Google Local Listings, Search Engine Journal

Paid Search & Contextual

• Purple Flowers Are Not Pink Despite What Google Might Think, Search Engine Guide
• How to Add Google Adsense Ad Units in Blogger Blog Posts, Digital Inspiration
• Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management : 4 Most Important Settings to Check in Your Microsoft adCenter Account, PPC Hero
• How to Improve Your AdWords Quality Score, PPC Hero
• adCenter Blog: Confessions of an Ad Copy Obsessive, adCenter Blog
• Commission Junction Offering Search Marketing Services, Search Engine Watch Blog
• Visual Sciences Launches New Version of Keyword Bid Management Solution, Bill Hartzer
• Operation Camouflage, The Art of War, and PPC, Engine Ready
• Google Should Add a Report Stolen Content Form in AdSense Console, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Still Powers Much of Ask.com’s Sponsored Results, Search Engine Roundtable
• Panama, 6 Months On, Read/Write Web

Searching

• Yahoo! Buzzlist versus Google Trends, Read/Write Web
• A Message to Firefox and IE 7 Users of hakia.com, Hakia Blog
• Travel Search: Up Close and Personal, Search Engine Watch
• Google launches Web History tool in U.K., News.com

SEM Industry

• Yahoo Pipes Part 4: Analyzing Sphinn, Search Engine Journal
• Who’s the Biggest, Baddest Webmaster Forum?, Threadwatcher.com
• Search Engine College Reaches Global Milestone, Ask Kalena

SEO & SEM

• Server location, cross-linking, and Web 2.0 technology thoughts, Official Google Webmaster Central Blog
• In-house Spotlight: Marcus Couch from Entrepreneur.com, Search Engine Journal
• Google Count Links within Word Documents, Search Engine Roundtable
• How To Choose Keywords, Karl Ribas
• How to Estimate the Length Tail for Your Target Market’s Keywords, SEO Book
• SEM Support Tools for Enterprise-Level Projects, Search Engine Watch

Social Media

• Slashdot Does a Digg: Launches "Slashdot Firehose", www.10e20.com
• Seth Godin Interview About Squidoo, Search Engine Guide
• Plaxo launching Pulse, its own social network, venturebeat.com

Other Items

• Yahoo Maps can’t spell, News.com
• Video: How Does Google Universal Search Work? (Funny), www.fathomseo.com

Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:

• How to SEO Flash
• Video: How Does Google Universal Search Work? Using Humans As Actors!
• How to Master the Google AdWords Quality Score
• Cloaking is alive and doing well in Google
• Are Stats the Crack pipe of SEO?
• Slashdot Does a Digg: Launches ëSlashdot Firehoseí
• 165,000 reasons why free can be extremely expensive
• Finally! Opt Out of AdSense for Domains
• Answers.com Issues Release Over Google Traffic Dropping 28%
• Your Thoughts On Sphinn Newsletter & SearchCap Inclusion?
• Forget Babysitting and Paper Routes, Teen Turns to SEO
• Stolen Content & AdSense – Time for Change!
• Flickr SEO in Action: Google Crawling Photo Tags and more
• SEOs home alone – Google’s nightmare