Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web:

From Search Engine Land:

• Digg Friending 101 & The Top Diggers List
  Last week Digg removed the "Top Diggers" list in order to help stop the manipulation and gaming of Digg, which resulted in a lot of commotion. Today, I wanted to take a fresh look to explain how the move may impact Digg’s "Friending" system and possibly allow more non-top…
• What Yahoo’s Panama Update Means For Searchers
  Yesterday’s rollout of Yahoo’s new Panama search advertising ranking system has been both praised and criticized by advertisers (see Panama is LIVE! – for some and Yahoo’s Panama: The Switch Is Flipped on The New Ad System). Praised, because the new system is streamlined, easier to use and offers more…
• Search Engine Land: January 2007 Statistics Review
  Time for the second monthly update on how Search Engine Land is growing. As I said with my review of December 2006 traffic, I hope our traffic statistics will be both interesting and also provide helpful tips to other search marketers. This review especially covers social media sites as a…
• Google’s Debated Penalties & Filters Roundup
  Over the years, there have been dozens if not hundreds, of theories on possible Google penalties and filters being used in the Google ranking algorithms. Joe Whyte provides an excellent roundup of many of those filters and penalties that the search forums have debated over the years. I am not…
• IAC Earnings Drop But Ask.com Grows
  Last night Ask.com’s parent company, IAC, reported earnings. Bloomberg reports that IAC’s profits dropped 98 percent in the fourth-quarter. The blame goes to the "entertainment coupon division." But Ask.com’s media and ad segment division did pretty well, showing a growth of 46 percent in revenue from $109.5 million in Q4…
• Hook Linkbait With The Right Headlines
  Andy Hagan has published an in-depth look at his link baiting methods. In his analysis, he finds that the "single most important aspect of a link bait piece is its title." I have been hearing this for years, you can have excellent content but if your title isn’t link bait…
• Google’s Pen Flatlines For Ask, Parody Of Recent Capacity Problems
  The Ask.com Blog made me laugh with their The Latest Google Flatline post. In that entry, Ask.com writes about the recent Google capacity issues reported at Techcrunch and describes how it is so true. In fact, they say that when they were using a Google pen, and it "ran out…
• Keyword Research And Consumer Demand
  Kevin Delaney at the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) today has an interesting article that borrows a page from John Battelle’s "database of intentions" idea of search as a kind of repository for consumer demand, buzz meter and perpetual focus group all in one….

Search News Headlines From Elsewhere:

• Google Talk Command Line Options, InsideGoogle
• Are the ides of April on your mind?, Google AdSense Blog
• Podcast: Yahoo Rolls Out New Panama Ad System; Google Ramps Up Personalized Search; YouTube Pulls Viacom Videos & More!, Daily SearchCast
• What’s in the updated SDK, Inside Google Desktop
• Super Bowl Ads – Where’s the URL?, Search Engine Watch Blog
• Survey Results of YouTube (and other Online Video) Users from Harris Interactive, ResourceShelf
• Triple Your Google AdWords CTR Overnight by Doing Nothing, Guaranteed!, SEO Book
• The Latest Google Flatline, The Ask.com Blog
• Google Slightly Adjusts Webmaster Guidelines, Google Blogoscoped
• SEOmoz VidCast 2 – Digg vs Reddit, SEOmoz
• YSM Confident in Canadian Rollout, Traffick
• On Alexa, Compete.com, Quantcast, et al, Traffick
• Hidden Content Costs & Understanding Your Profit Potential Per Page, SEO Book
• Google Reader Adds Quick-n-Easy Blogger Integration, InsideGoogle
• Setting Up a Blog – Some Things You Should Know From an SEO Perspective, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Adwords New Knowledge Center, SEO News Blog
• Panama Enhances Relevancy for Searchers, Yahoo Search Blog
• Google’s Froogle (Google Base Uploads) To Require Specific Fields, Search Engine Roundtable
• 2000 Bloggers Gaming Technorati and Google, Zoli’s Blog
• Google’s YouTube to warn Japanese users on piracy, Reuters.co.uk
• Competing Against Google in the Google.com Search Results, Search Engine Roundtable
• Connecting with a new market, San Jose Business Journal

Related Topics: SearchCap

About The Author: Danny Sullivan is editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land. He’s a widely cited authority on search engines and search marketing issues who has covered the space since 1996. Danny also oversees Search Engine Land’s SMX: Search Marketing Expo conference series. He maintains a personal blog called Daggle (and maintains his disclosures page there). He can be found on Facebook, Google + and microblogs on Twitter as @dannysullivan. See more articles by Danny Sullivan