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

From Search Engine Land:

• The Social Side Of Trustrank
  A newly published patent application from Yahoo, Using community annotations as anchortext, provides a hint at some of the research and work that Yahoo is doing to incorporate user created tags, annotations, bookmarks, and social profiles into the way that they index and organize information, and rank that information. Danny asked me if I would mention a recent SEO by the Sea post here, where I went into some depth on the processes described in that document. It is at Social Trustrank and User Annotations as Anchor Text. One of the most interesting aspects the patent covers is how trustrank…
• Stay Master Of Your Feed Domain
  In Jennifer Slegg’s 25 Tips To Optimize Your Blog For Readers & Search Engines post from yesterday, tip 22 was to use your own domain name. I wanted to dive a bit deeper into that in terms of having your own domain name for your feeds, which is incredibly easy and cheap to do via FeedBurner. Moreover, failure to maintain control of your feeds by not using your own domain is one of the biggest mistakes I feel many marketers make. I love FeedBurner. I’ll say it again — I love them. They make it incredibly easy for me to…
• Should Google Pay Off Brand Owners With Cut Of Keyword Sales?
  I saw Should Google Give Brand Owners A Cut? from InsideGoogle earlier, about the idea of Google paying brand owners a share of revenues of those advertising on their names. Then a reader just emailed me asking what I think about the idea. OK, I’ll bite. In short — probably not. More on that below, along with a review of Google’s existing policies and how they came to be. Plus, give me your thoughts by commenting!…
• Authorama: Testing If Google Can Restrict Public Domain Books It Offers For Download
  Freeing Google Books from Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped covers him trying an interesting experiment. Can Google dictate that public domain books that it has scanned and distributed on the web really be subject to restrictions on non-commercial work? First a look at how Google provides these books. Google says that PDF downloads are available for most out of copyright books via Google Book Search. Sadly, I find the instructions on finding these don’t match the actual difficulty in doing so. From the instructions:…
• Google Blog Search’s People Search Spam Problem
  Last month, I wrote Public Spam/Splog Report over on my personal blog, begging Google to stop the "people search" spam that’s been clogging my Google Blog Search feeds with junk off Google’s own Blogger service. Today, I noticed Steve Rubel writing recently on the same issue. Steve gives you the screenshots of how the junk shows up on Google Blog Search. My post goes into depth on the redirection and scraping that’s going on. End of story, the junk needs to step. C’mon, Google — fix it. FYI, here’s today’s latest junk out of my newsreader from just today:…
• Search Engine Land: Top Stories & Stats, Jan. 9, 2007
  Earlier I did a review of traffic stats for Search Engine Land in December 2006. Today, I’m looking at what happened on the site yesterday, in terms of most popular stories. I can’t promise to do this every day. But doing a daily stats review is part of my regular routine, and it helps me keep track of what drove traffic when I do a monthly review as well. So here’s yesterday on Search Engine Land, looking at our top stories and what made them pop. Google Named Fortune’s Best Place To Work, But Rich Early Employees Checking Out had…
• Virtual Earth Enhances Aerial, Satellite Imagery
  Still somewhat ahead of consumer demand, Microsoft continues to build on its commitment to rich satellite and aerial imagery (in addition to 3-D) through its Virtual Earth platform (and Live Local destination). Earlier today Microsoft announced that it will integrate more than 400,000 square miles of U.S. aerial imagery into Virtual Earth, under an agreement with satellite image provider GlobeXplorer….

Search News Headlines From Elsewhere:

• Yahoo, Newspaper Groups Considering Expanding Deal To Display Ad Sales, PaidContent.org
• Gannett, Tribune and McClatchy To Jointly Sell Online Ads Across Properties: WSJ, PaidContent.org
• Newspapers Set to Jointly Sell Web Ads, Wall Street Journal
• Podcast: Google Makes It To Apple’s iPhone; 25 Blog Optimization Tips; Can Google Restrict Use Of Downloadable Public Domain Books & More, Daily SearchCast
• Online Advertising Isn’t Going Anywhere But Up, Search Engine Guide
• eBay’s new protections escalate against Google, MarketWatch
• Better Video Search Presentation in SearchMash, Google Operating System
• On Angels, Opportunities And Experience: Techdirt Welcomes Mark Fletcher To Our Board, TechDirt
• The National Library of Catalonia joins the Library Project, Official Google Book Search Blog
• The New Bidding System, Yahoo Search Marketing Blog
• Upgrade Resources, Yahoo Search Marketing Blog
• Why Yahoo Needs MyBlogLog, and Vice Versa, Search Engine Journal
• Good Search Engine Marketing Books, Search Marketing Standard
• Snap & Cooliris Web Site Preview Tools, Search Engine Journal
• Ask.com’s Jim Lanzone Reveals Plans for Search Engine’s Future, Marketing Pilgrim
• Take Me To Your SEO Leader, Search Engine Roundtable
• OPML Icons and Hacks, Micro Persuasion
• The SEO Debate Continues, Out Of My Gord
• OnPage SEO Is Garbage Clarification On Rockstars, Shoemoney
• Organic Search Versus Sponsored Results: The Forum Round, Search Engine Roundtable
• The Bigger Question of SEO, SearchDay
• What is the Future of SEO?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Should Help Prevent China Piracy, Group Says, Bloomberg.com
• Judy’s Book: Avoiding the DeadPool, TechCrunch
• Bid Management Tools: Thoughts in Progress, Traffick
• Matt Mullenweg – Creator Of WordPress -Podcast and Recap Post, Shoemoney
• Libraries Continue Adding Material to The Internet Archive, More than 100K Books Now Available on IA Site, ResourceShelf
• Putting a Price on a Link – Jim’s Value Indicators, Jim Boykin
• VerticalSearch.net Domain For Sale, Search Engine Journal
• Google Toolbar PageRank Update Being Reported, Search Engine Roundtable
• Real Estate Listings Go Mobile, ClickZ
• Monitoring Competitors’ SEO Efforts, Search Engine Roundtable
• You Need Video in Your Marketing Mix in 2007, Search Marketing Standard
• Google, Yahoo brandish partnerships at electronics show, Associated Press
• Mobile Chaos Continues…, Google Blogoscoped
• iChanged My Mind, Small Business SEM
• Google GeoTargeting way off, Dave Naylor
• Listen to Your Site, SEO Book
• Expectations and Best Practices for Moving to or Launching a New Domain, SEOmoz
• In the Second Week of New Year’s, My SearchDay Gave to Me, SearchDay
• Only one SE looks at ‘Meta Description’ for indexing/ranking, Small Business SEM
• Pimp my links: How Do I Mac?, Pronet Advertising
• Link Bait: The Down Side, V7N
• Kick start 2007 with AdWords learning, Official Google AdWords Blog
• MapQuest API For All, Search Engine Watch Blog
• Dialing Microsoft for Voice Search, SEO By The Sea
• I launched my new brand today(…), Mike Grehan
• IceRocket and Some New (?) Popularity Features, ResearchBuzz
• Improper Use of the Link Rel Nofollow Attribute, SEO Book
• All your blogs are belong to us – Blogger Portability?, Naffziger
• Web 2.0 Awards, Version 2.0, SEOmoz

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