SearchCap: The Day In Search, January 4, 2008

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

From Search Engine Land:

• PC World Picks Ask3D As One Of “The 25 Most Innovative Products Of The Year”
  At number 23, Ask3D was named one of PC World’s “25 Most Innovative Products of the Year.” The site opined that Ask “melds comprehensive search results more coherently than competing universal searches do.” Ask saw the largest gains in consumer satisfaction in the annual University of Michigan American Customer Satisfaction…
• Googlebot In Aisle Three: How Google Plans to Index the World?
  Robots reading cereal boxes in the Supermarket? Googlebot at the Art Museum? Street signs and building addresses snatched from Street View images for local search, image search, and product search? Three new patent applications published at the Us Trademark and Patent Office this week explore the intricacies of reading text…
• Truveo Index Hits 100 Million Videos
  AOL-owned video search engine Truveo announced yesterday that its video index had reached 100 million videos and predicted that number would climb to a billion by 2009. The company also said that its search index grew in 2007 from a base of just five million videos at relaunch in August,…
• What Time Is It? Don’t Check Google (At Least In Argentina)
  This Flickr screen capture alerted us to the fact that Google hasn’t yet accounted for daylight savings time in Buenos Aires, which began at midnight on December 30. Denizens of the capital of Argentina set their clocks forward but Google neglected to. Apparently the time is still off by an…
• Google’s User Experience Expert, Kevin Fox, Joins New Start-up Company
  Kevin Fox, Google’s user experience designer, responsible for helping design Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Reader 2.0 has announced he is leaving Google to join a “very small start-up.” Today is his last day at Google, after being with Google for over four years. Kevin did not say the name…
• Google Takes NASA To Watch Meteor Shower
  NASA to watch meteor shower via Google plane from the San Jose Business Journal reports NASA scientists used Google’s plane to watch a meteor shower last night. The Google jet left Mineta San Jose International Airport at 4:30pm last night and flew over the Arctic and back to San Jose….
• Nathan Stoll, Long Time Google News Product Manager Leaves Google
  Nathan Stoll, a long time Googler and the Product Manager of the Google News service announced at his personal blog that he has left Google. His announcement came about three weeks ago, but he is now officially not a Google employee. Nathan said: I’ve decided that it is time for…
• The Virtual World: Darwin says We can Handle It
  One of the things that as always struck me when I look at online user behavior is the scattered and frenetic scanning of the page. This becomes particularly clear when you look at eye tracking results. We quickly shift our eyes to cue to cue, picture to picture, headline…

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• New Version of gOS To Be Launched At CES Complete With Google Gears, TechCrunch

Business Issues

• NYT: Weather Channel/.Com for Sale, Screenwerk

Conferences

• Ask SEMpdx: What are the Benefits of Attending / Speaking at Search Engine Conferences?, Search Engine Guide

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google Map’s Business Location Bulk Upload Now Working Again, Search Engine Roundtable
• Meraki Networks Raises $20 Million, Expands Free WiFi in San Francisco, Where Google Failed, TechCrunch
• Startup Revives Free Wi-Fi Hopes in S.F., The Associated Press

Paid Search & Contextual

• AdWords and local markets, Official Google Blog
• Upload Google Campaigns in Yahoo! in Three Easy Steps, PPC Hero
• Google AdWords 101, Search Engine Watch
• Google AdWords Ads Live While Site is Offline, Search Engine Roundtable
• UK Base Rate Changes – Effective as of January 10th 2008, adCenter Blog

SEM Industry

• 2007 Small Business SEM Blog Stats, Small Business SEM
• 2008… Bound to be great!, Mike Grehan
• Google Earth Blog Stats for 2007, Google Earth Blog

SEO & SEM

• Guest Post: a Super Digg: Gaining 300k Hits from Google in 24 Hours with January 1 TCP/IP, SEO Book
• Ask.com Fixes Crawler Issue With Badly-Formed URLs, Search Engine Roundtable
• Do Deep Folders Stop Search Engines?, All Things SEM
• How do We Add Affiliates to Our Site?, SEO Book
• Mahalo, human powered scraping and the QDF algorithm, SEOptimise
• My plea to Google – Please sanitize your REP revamps, Sebastians Pamphlets
• Win the Right Search Marketing Clients, Search Engine Watch

Social Media

• It’s the Quality of the Network, not the Quantity of Faces, BruceClay.com
• How to Set Yourself up as a Viral Success, Search Engine Guide
• Linkbait Graphics: How Would I Do This?, 10e20
• New Features – Family News and More, The Geni Blog
• Whiteboard Friday – Why Your Viral Content Isn’t Working, SEOmoz

Video, Music & Image Search

• I’m in Yahoo News, Aprille on Flickr

Other Items

• New Search Related Patent Apps: A Busy Day for Microsoft, ResourceShelf
• Google on Reading Text in Images from Street Views, Store Shelves, and Museum Interiors, SEO By The Sea
• Republican Ron Paul: 2008 Presidential Candidates & Online Marketing Strategies, Search Marketing Gurus

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

• Making Sense of PPC Search Marketing
• Social Media Ninjas – Unite!
• Search Engine Marketing Career Tips
• Super Digg: Gaining 300k Hits from Google in 24 Hours with January 1 TCP/IP
• Remainders from 2007: Good Stuff I Didn’t Get to Yet
• Facebook Boots Scooble – What did he do?
• Social Media and Reputation
• How to Survive Digg on a Shared Host
• The Top 10 Most Needed Robots.txt Statements or How Google Messes With The REP
• Darth-Google and the Dark Side of the Force Penalty
• Think Like a Search Engineer
• Ask SEMpdx: What are the Benefits of Attending / Speaking at Search Engine Conferences?
• Dumbass of the Week: The Call Center Cow
• Google AdSense Tips from Philipp Lenssen
• Internet Marketing Ninja Interview with Jim Boykin
• The Domain Collector (a Parable)
• Moving From a Single Blog to a Blog Network
• Netscape : Strong Brand with No Identity
• Top 11 Link Baiting Guides That Everybody Ought To Read
• The Ins and Outs of Forum Marketing
• 7 Types of Blog Posts Which Always Seem to Get Links and Traffic
• Top 10 Obscure Google Search Tricks
• Why Deciphering The Truth From Speculation In SEM/SEO Is Important