SearchCap: The Day In Search, July 15, 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:

• Twitter & Summize Tie The Knot
  The rumors that Twitter will be buying Summize have now been confirmed. Twitter, the popular micro-blogging platform has acquired Summize, a search engine that searches Twitter. You can read all the news at Techmeme and also make sure to check out Danny’s write up on Summize named Summize Gains “Local”…
• Hold On — Issues Remain Over Google & Viacom’s Deal On YouTube Viewing Privacy
  Google and Viacom have reached an agreement meant to ease privacy concerns about YouTube records being handed over to Viacom through a court order. However, there remain some questions about how exactly the "anonymizing" of these records will actually work. Until those are answered, I wouldn’t breathe a complete…
• Google Enables Political Video Search With Speech Recognition, Showcases 3D Technology
  Google is introducing an Elections Search Gadget that allows users to search transcripts of political speeches and videos that appear on YouTube candidate channels. The speech recognition technology (also shared with Goog411) produces a transcript of the videos, which can then searched by users of the Gadget to find precise…
• Google’s Pittman Talks About Visual Search & Facial Recognition Capabilities
  Beet.TV interviewed R.J. Pittman, Google’s Director of Product Management for Consumer Search Properties, about image search. The video is below, but here is my short summary of the interview. Pittman said Image Search has huge growth opportunity for Google. Google explained that text doesn’t always describe the image, so they…
• Google Expands Edit My Search Results Feature?
  The Google Like/Don’t Like feature, where you can move up results, hide search results or remove search results, seems to have been expanded to a group of test searchers. We have reports from TechCrunch, Google Operating System and Justin Hileman, with reports of users seeing this feature in the main…
• Search Illustrated: PDF Optimization
  Don’t make the mistake of thinking that just because content isn’t HTML-based doesn’t mean it can’t be optimized. An Adobe Acrobat reader (aka PDF) document gives SEOs one more chance at ranking for targeted keywords. This week’s infographic illustrates some simple tips for optimizing PDFs:…

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• AOL launches personal finance site, Yahoo! News

Business Issues

• This Week’s Outgoing Yahoo Exec: GM Entertainment Karin Gilford, TechCrunch
• Brad Smith: Written Testimony on the Google/Yahoo! Agreement and the Future of Internet Advertising, Microsoft
• Congressional hearings on online competition and our ad agreement with Yahoo, Google Public Policy Blog
• Finding A Perfect Match, Twitter Blog
• From the Inside, Jerry Yang Looks Out for Yahoo, New York Times
• Google’s invented what will be the most scorned technology on Capitol Hill, News.com
• Google’s Retention Problem?, Paul Kedrosky
• How Carl Icahn Screwed Up a Perfectly Good Search Deal, Alley Insider

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google plays Hide and Seek with Android SDK, The Register
• MapPoint 2009 / Streets & Trips 2009, Virtual Earth, An Evangelist’s Blog
• Mobile Search: One Platform To Search Them All?, altsearchengines.com
• Cities in 3D program in action, Google LatLong

Link Building

• Sports Link Building – DoFollow Tuesdays, Link Building Best Practices
• Yahoo Site Explorer’ Dying?, seoroi.com

Paid Search & Contextual

• How to contact adCenter support – adCenter Advertiser, adcentercommunity.com
• Yahoo Can Still Alter Your PPC Account And This Time You Can’t Opt Out, PPC Hero
• As Sold by Google, Ads on Yahoo Could Cost 22 Percent More, New York Times
• Bernstein Research Predicts the Future of Paid Search, Search Engine Watch
• Google AdWords Sandbox Tool Fussy With Diacritics or Cyrillics, Search Engine Roundtable
• Sign up to test the adCenter Desktop Beta – adCenter Advertiser, www.adcentercommunity.com

Searching

• Delver Launches Social Search, Read/Write Web
• Twing Buzz Graph: When Googling Oneself isn’t Enough, mashable.com

SEM Industry

• Recruiting SEO Talent for Big Sites, Search Engine Watch

SEO & SEM

• Generic Malware Debunking Post, Matt Cutts
• A common standard for the Robots.txt protocol, Pandia
• A Web Site Has the Top Eleven Spots in Google – Smart SEO or Marketing Trick?, Cre8tive Flow
• Destination Search Engine Marketing, Part II: What Would Sudden Exposure Get You, Search Engine Guide
• Domain Age: How Important Is It for SEO?, Search Engine Journal
• Duplicate Content — A True Story, Search Engine Watch
• Five Sneaky Ways to Build Website Traffic, ViperChill
• Flash and SEO – Compelling Reasons Why Search Engines , SEOmoz
• Huge Drop in Google Traffic? Can’t Find The Problem? Check Your Links, Search Engine Roundtable
• Search-Friendly Flash?, Vanessa Fox
• When Search Engine Optimization Really Matters, BruceClay.com
• Yahoo Site Command Works Without Applying [site:]?, Search Engine Roundtable

Social Media

• New Features for the New Profile Design, Facebook Developers News
• Digg Traffic to Print Media, Hitwise
• Social News – Is It Really Social?, Search Marketing Gurus

Video, Music & Image Search

• Americans Viewed 12 Billion Videos Online in May 2008, comScore

Other Items

• Google Fridges Begin To Melt Down, Search Engine Roundtable
• TechCult’s Top 100 Web Celebrities, TechCult

Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:

• Why The Google Keyword Tool Is Useless For SEO, Even With Exact Numbers
• Marketing Suggestions – Unfavorable Realities of The Blogosphere
• Using Social Media to Promote Social Media Promoting Crap About Nothing
• 8 Innovative Design & UI Elements That Make Sites Better
• Domain Age: How Important Is It for SEO?
• Learn to Work Smarter, Not Harder: Before it Kills You
• How to track your outbound clicks with onclick in Google Analytics
• 7 Search Marketing Strategies for B2B Manufacturers & Distributors
• The New Media Lifecycle and Social Discovery
• Your SEO Mentor's Interview with UtahSEOPro aka Jordan Kasteler
• Advanced Keyword Research for SEO
• SEO For Semantic Search Engines