SearchCap: The Day In Search, December 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:

• Yahoo oneSearch To Power Wireless Carrier Portals In Latin America
  Even as attention has been focused on Google’s 700 MHz spectrum bid and its Android mobile platform, Yahoo has been aggressively doing business development with mobile operators and handset makers around the world, in Asia, Europe and now Latin America. This morning Yahoo announced that it had inked another major…
• FCC Accepts Google Airwaves, Inc’s 700MHz Application; AT&T’s Deemed Incomplete
  When the applications were submitted to the FCC to bid in the forthcoming 700MHz wireless spectrum auction, it appeared that there were going to be a handful of major bidders: Verizon, AT&T, Cox Communications, Frontier Wireless, MetroPCS and Google. In fact there were 266 would-be bidders that submitted applications, although…
• Discount On Search Marketing Standard Magazine
  I’ve meant for ages to put a plug in for Search Marketing Standard, the print magazine that Boris Mordkovich started in 2006. Since then, it has continued on each quarter, and it’s pretty cool to see search marketing articles playing out in print. Boris is on a readership campaign with…
• FTC’s Xmas Gift To Google: Approval Of DoubleClick Acquisition
  The US Federal Trade Commission has granted its approval for Google to purchase DoubleClick. Google has a press release up with the news, and the FTC announcement is here. The many parties have raised privacy issues with the deal, the FTC noted this was not germane to its approval:…
• Google, Yahoo & Microsoft To Pay $31.5M For Illegal Gambling Ads
  Microsoft, Google, Yahoo to Pay $31.5M Over Illegal Gambling Ads from ABC News reports the big three search engine companies settled with the US Justice Department to pay $31.5 million to educate that online gambling is illegal in the United States. Microsoft is paying the most with $21 million, followed…
• Privacy Group Finds Flaws In AskEraser’s Privacy Tool
  Group says Ask’s privacy feature is flawed from News.com reports that the Electronic Privacy Information Center has found a few flaws in AskEraser, Ask.com new privacy searching feature. The three problems are: AskEraser uses an opt-out cookie instead of an opt-in cookie. Ask stores the time that the user enables…
• Jason Shellen, former Google Reader product manager, Joins LiveJournal
  Former Blogger Googler Shellen joins LiveJournal from News.com reports Jason Shellen, the former Google Reader product manager is joining LiveJournal as the vice president of product development. Shellen announced his departure from Google in July of this year. He said he left because he has the “entrepreneurial/start-up bug,” where he…
• Sculpting Your PageRank For Maximum SEO Impact
  If you are a large online retailer, you’re looking at thousands upon thousands of pages that have the opportunity to get crawled and indexed in the SERPs (search engine results pages). You’re also looking at near infinite choices for how you interlink all those pages. Out of all those…
• SEO Is Not An Option, It’s A Requirement!
  Recently, there was a thread in the High Rankings Forum asking whether SEO is an extra skill or a prerequisite for any website designer/developer. It was a great question that spurred a lot of conversation. It goes without saying that the average small-business owner in 2007 knows that they…
• Microsoft Live Search Fixes Issue With Listing Google AdWords Ads
  Earlier today, we reported that over 4 million Google AdSense ads were being indexed by Microsoft Live Search. Tonight, the Microsoft Live Search Webmaster Center blog has posted that they’ve identified and fixed the issue and that search results should return to normal within the next few days….

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Colored labels with filters: A new way to read your inbox, Official Gmail Blog
• Desktop Gadgets for the Holiday Season, Inside Google Desktop

Business Issues

• Google Poaching Beacon Partners For "Universal Activity Stream", TechCrunch
• 8 bold predictions on Google’s next moves, ComputerWorld
• Ask.com hires Pricerunner.co.uk, UTalkMarketing

Conferences

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Where in the world is… (Answers), Google LatLong
• Citysearch and Local.com in Distribution Deal, Screenwerk

Link Building

• Link Building Case Study: Santa Claus, Search Engine Watch

Paid Search & Contextual

• New Interactive AdSense Unit with Pictures Spotted, ProBlogger
• Financial Blogger Abandons AdSense, ProBlogger
• How to Use Dynamic Keyword Insertion to Hook Customers, PPC Hero
• Google Discontinues Inline Gadgets, Google Blogoscoped
• Google Sends Out AdSense Payments Early in December, Search Engine Roundtable
• Adwords Coupons Coming Back to Haunt Google Adwords, ShoeMoney
• Manage Ads gives you more ad functionality, Inside AdSense
• The Adwords Conversion Optimiser Algorithm Explained, SiteVisibility

SEM Industry

• Women of Internet Marketing Wednesdays Part 31: Vanessa Fox & Jen Yuan, Search Marketing Gurus

SEO & SEM

• Google’s Supplemental Index Announcement Drives More Confusion, Search Engine Roundtable
• Ping the hell out of Technorati’s reputation algo, sebastians-pamphlets.com
• What the End of Supplemental Means to You, Small Business SEM
• Getting Into MS Live Should Not Be This Hard, SEMpdx Blog
• Mosaic Cloaking – Pushing IP Delivery to the Next Level of Black Hat SEO, Fantomaster
• Search Engine Visibility and Site Crawlability, Part 1, Search Engine Watch

Social Media

• A Beginner’s Guide to Social News Websites, DoshDosh
• Hooray for (Virtual) Gifts!, Twitter Blog
• Tweeterboard: Who Does That Person on Twitter Think They Are? – ReadWriteWeb, Read/Write Web
• Finally, a Twitter Measurement Tool that works, www.web-strategist.com
• Orkut spam worm spotted!, McAfee
• Facebook Wants to Know If I’m Hot. Or Something., Vanessa Fox
• Are Webmasters / Internet Marketers ruining StumbleUpon?, ViperChill
• Old Idea Creative Thinking New Media = Viral Marketing Potential Part 1, Search Engine Guide
• Old Idea Creative Thinking New Media = Viral Marketing Potential Part 2, Search Engine Guide

Video, Music & Image Search

• Digging Deeper::When Will Google’s ‘Big Project’ YouTube Bring in Profits?, PBS

Web Analytics

• A better way of tracking feed subcribes – Analytics, Joost de Valk

Other Items

• Podcast: Send Google Maps To GPS, Flight Tracking, Yahoo Drag-And-Drop Routing , Daily SearchCast

Last 20 Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:

• Social Media Hangovers …
• To Niche or not to niche: Top bloggers tell all
• Buy Kids and Sell Kids in Google
• Ding Dong, Digg is Dead
• Vanessa Fox & Jen Yuan – Women of Internet Marketing Wednesdays Interview
• Yes, Mom, Search Marketing IS A Valid Career Choice
• Buried Link Treasure: The Acquisition of Quality Backlinks
• Digg’s IM Epidemic: The Community Turns to Gaming and Corruption
• Forced Verticals: You Are Not Spam if You Are the Only Option Available
• Competitors Response to Google Knol -Time To Limit The Aggregators?
• How does Google Pick Snippets for Your Pages to Show in Search Results?
• Is This the 11th Hour for Thin Affiliate Sites
• Stumbleupon’s Sandbox and Penalization Process
• The Reincarnation of Apprenticeship