SearchCap: The Day In Search, July 18, 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:

• Telecom Pundit Predicts FTC Blockage of Google-DoubleClick Deal
  Microsoft’s acquisition of aQuantive was recently approved by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Yahoo completed its acquisition of ad exchange Right Media after a green light from the FTC. That just leaves Google-DoubleClick as the last major acquisition on the regulatory table. Now a telecom consultant, Scott Cleland,…
• Tell Matt About Your Google Web Search Bugs
  Notice a bug in the Google web search results? If so, Matt Cutts wants you to report them to him on his blog. There is one big rule, Matt said: I only want to see specific queries that seem to show bugs, and the more concisely you can explain something,…
• Google Makes Ad Preview Tool Easier To Use
  The Inside AdWords blog announced that they have improved the Google AdWords Preview Tool. Google launched the preview tool in September 2006. Back then, you had to manually add location attributes and values to the URL of the preview tool to see ads within that location. Now Google is offering…
• Google To Offer Enterprise Edition Of YouTube
  Apps vs. Office: Google Ups the Ante from BusinessWeek reports that Google is planning a corporate version of YouTube to host training and employee communications videos. It also looks at Google’s move to generate revenue by offering applications for the corporate market. Garett Rogers of Googling Google picked up on…
• Protect Your Employees, Online
  Have you ever checked out what people are saying about your brand on blogs and on photo-sharing sites such as Yahoo’s Flickr or Google’s Picasa? Have you also taken the time to monitor what people are saying about your employees? You owe it to your employees to look out…
• Google Offering Print Ads To More Advertisers & Papers
  Google announced that they have expanded their Print Ads program both on the advertiser and publisher side. They have expanded their newspaper base from 50 papers now to 225 newspapers representing 32 of the top 35 DMAs and a combined circulation of almost 30 million, according to Google. Plus, Google…
• Organic Landing Pages: A Case Study
  Much is written about engineering landing pages for PPC campaigns, but all too often little thought goes into creating the right landing pages for SEO, even less so for B2B SEO. Obviously, for any given query you can’t dictate to the search engines the exact page to which a…
• Ask.com Adds Sitemaps Autodiscovery Support
  It appears that Ask.com is now implementing support for the Sitemaps protocol that they got behind back in April. One of our readers commented here notifying us that Ask.com added a pinging service for autodiscovery. Checking further, I found the details on how to ping Ask.com is its Webmaster Help…
• Yahoo Sees Revenue Growth, But Income Down
  Yahoo released its Q2 earnings a little while ago. What they show is low double-digit growth in certain revenue categories, but also decreases in selected areas (e.g., operating income, free cash flow). Revenue and operating cash flow described as consistent with the “midpoint of guidance.” Here’s the earnings release (PDF…

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Feed Discovery API and AJAX Search on the iPhone, Google AJAX Search API Blog

• Google Patent Application on Converting Spreadsheets to Web Applications, SEO By The Sea

• Google Security Flaw Allows Sites to Auto-Subscribe New RSS Readers, Blogstrom
• New people directory PeekYou claims 50 million profiles, 901am

Business Issues

• New Zealand Government Web Site Now Using Viv­simo Tech, ResourceShelf

• Focused from the inside out, Yodel Anecdotal

• Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive and Google Renew Multi-Year Advertising Agreement, Google Press
• Yahoo buys stake in Indian online ad company, InfoWorld

• Why the FTC Will Likely Block the Google-DoubleClick Merger, Precursor Blog

• Dow Jones Board Approves Sale, Wall Street Journal

Conferences

• Getting a Head Count for SES San Jose, Search Engine Roundtable

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Eye On You: Google Streetview Camera Car Fleet Set to Invade America, Gizmodo
• 3D Campus Winners Now in 3D Buildings Layer, Google Earth Blog

• New Layers Update – Earth at Night NASA Layer, Google Earth Blog

Paid Search & Contextual

• A Little AdWords Quality Score Sluething, PPC Hero
• Yahoo! to Rival Adsense with Tyroo Ads, Jajah Comes to India, Digital Inspiration
• Advice on Landing Pages from the Experts, More Details on the SEOmoz Contest & Our First Landing Page Submission, SEOmoz
• Seven Steps to a Better Landing Page, Search Engine Guide
• Maximizing Google Pay Per Action Referrals, Search Engine Roundtable
• Analyzing Data to Lower Your CPA, Search Engine Watch
• Microsoft Losing Millions on Google UK?, SEOptimise
• What’s new in the world of invalid clicks, Inside AdWords

Searching

• Finding Related Web Pages, Google Operating System
• New Business Search Engine Knuru.com Announces Release of Knuru BlogWatch, URLwire
• Google Finally Accept “Optimisation”, ViperChill
• Competing With Google Search, Read/Write Web
• Lifetime Trust Between Your Search Engine and Your Information, Hakia
• FoodieView Is Recipe Search Engine, Restaurant Review, Search Engine Watch Blog

SEM Industry

• Michael Yack, Link Farmer, Makes it Big with FabulousSavings.com in the Toronto Star, SEOmoz
• Housebreaking the Search, Search Engine Watch
• 10 Questions With Lisa Barone, SEO Honolulu

SEO & SEM

• New site that shows your search engine rank, Ogletree
• 15 Things About How Google Handles Duplicate Content, Stone Temple
• How Search Optimization Works, Karl Ribas
• Do Images Help You Rank Higher in Search Results?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Data Feed Optimization Basics, SEO Beginning Podcast
• Link Building Tips and Tricks, Search Engine Roundtable
• The first rule of indexing: make sure you’re letting the site be indexed,  Fox Vanessa
• Why Small Businesses Need SEO to be Successful, Search Engine Journal
• Search Engine Optimization: Do It Yourself or Farm It Out?, Bruce Clay
• Google Offers Advice on Flash Web Sites & SEO, Search Engine Roundtable

Social Media

• Marketers Can Buy Blog “Buzz” Nielsen Reports, ResourceShelf
• Social Media Versus Traditional Media: Brand Impact Analysis, Pronet Advertising

Video, Music & Image Search

• Google Leads the Way in Online Video, Read/Write Web
• YouTube’s web dominance revealed in US News, PC Advisor
• Pattern Matching in Google, Google Blogoscoped

Other Items

• How offline businesses can improve their web sites, at least according to me, Vanessa Fox
• File registration and uploading temporarily unavailable, Google Base Blog
• The Benefits of Using Google’s Custom Search Engine, SEO Book.com
• Home Design Vertical Search, Search Engine Watch Blog
• Video: What You Need to Know About the New Google Analytics, Marketing Pilgrim

Hot Items From Sphinn:

• Xinu: More Stats For Any site
• “Sphinn.com is basically a popularity contest.”
• Web Analytics and the Obsession for More Detail
• SEO Impact of Googleís unavailable_after META Tag
• Being a Link Builder – Managing Internal Links
• LOLCats SEO Edition
• comScore Also Reports Microsoft Search Share Rise
• Finally, A Way to Submit to Ask.com
• Good SEOs Have Always Been Marketers
• A Complete Guide to Using Flickr for Traffic Building