SearchCap: The Day In Search, July 20, 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:

• Search in Pictures: Yahoo Hair, Google Beach & Extremists
  In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have and more….
• Yahoo Shortcuts For Sale?
  Scott Hendison found an interesting Yahoo Shortcut that appears Yahoo might be selling these shortcuts. A search on special k at Yahoo Search returns this Yahoo Shortcut….
• Google Offers $4.6 Billion Incentive So The FCC Can Approve Wireless Spectrum Proposal
  Google has made it officially clear that they are committed to making their wireless spectrum proposal win the FCC decision. Google said they would bid $4.6 billion for the 700 megahertz band wireless spectrum, if the FCC approved their proposal. Why? Google said they want to put their money where…
• Exalead Teams With Directory Assistance Provider To Offer Voice-Powered Mobile Search In France
  Gary Price at ResourceShelf alerted us to the fact that enhanced directory assistance provider 118 218 in France is now offering a much broader service using content and results from search engine Exalead. In principle, this is comparable to enhanced directory assistance/mobile voice search services being offered in the US…
• Searching For Earthquakes
  This morning at 5 am US Pacific time there was a magnitude 4.2 earthquake in the Oakland, California hills where I live. Danny found the earthquake by doing a search on Ask simply for “earthquakes.” The example highlights the value of Ask 3D, the inclusion of more “vertical” structure in…
• EU Backed Search Engine, Theseus, Given $165 Million Grant
  EU OKs German Online Search-Engine Grant from Forbes reports Theseus, the German search engine that is currently under development, has received a $165 million grant from the European Union. Theseus is expected to be the most advanced multimedia search engine when it is launched. The EU is expected to fund…
• How To Hire A Search Marketing Team Leader
  When you make the decision to build an in-house team to manage the search marketing function for your company, the biggest challenge that you’ll face is where to actually find the first person that will be the one to create and mold your in-house team. Do you want to…
• Ask.com To Launch AskEraser To Erase Search History & New Data Retention Policy
  Ask.com announced that they will be launching "AskEraser" in the near future, a feature to allow you to erase your search history. Ask also said it will be implementing a new 18 month data retention policy, where searches will be disassociated from IP addresses or cookies that might possibly be…
• Yahoo July 2007 Search Update
  The Yahoo Search Blog announced that they are currently rolling out a web search update. Priyank Garg’s “weather report” said: We’ve been rolling out some changes to our fresh web data and crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms over the last few days. We expect the update will be completed by…
• Microsoft Reports Q2 Revenues
  Here’s the Microsoft earnings release: “Microsoft Corp. today announced revenue of $13.37 billion for the quarter ended June 30, 2007, a 13% increase over the same period of the prior year.” Online Services Business is the category where search and other ad revenues are reported. Here’s what the release shows:…
• Google Free Fridays Now Officially Become Google Free Mondays
  Earlier this month, we started the Google Free Friday series, designed to open readers’ eyes to search engines beyond Google. AOL happened on schedule, then I had to move Ask.com to this past Monday, as I got behind in writing as we launched our Sphinn social news and sharing site….
• Google Q2 2007 Revenues Released: $3.87 billion
  Google just reported Q2 revenues: “Google reported revenues of $3.87 billion for the quarter ended June 30, 2007, representing a 58% increase over second quarter 2006 revenues of $2.46 billion and a 6% increase over first quarter 2007 revenues of $3.66 billion.” Revenues were somewhat short of high-end Wall Street…

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Thanks for all the spam reports, Gmail Blog

• Our Directory is Your Directory, Google Enterprise Blog

• Users Report Gaining Access to Random Google Accounts, Google Operating System
• Want to see Gatineau?, DaveN

• Ask Launches Bloglines For iPhone, Cartoon Barry
  

Business Issues

• Google will do better in China, Schmidt says, Webwereld
• Google Officer Settles an Accounting Claim, New York Times
• Can Jerry Yang fix Yahoo?, News.com

Conferences

• SMX Social Media Agenda Is Up!, SMX Blog
• Speaking At SMX Social Media 2007, SMX Blog

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Getting Started in Local Search, Search Engine Watch
• LocalSearch Control: 3 New Features!, Google Maps API Blog

Paid Search & Contextual

• Top 5 Settings to Check When Starting a Yahoo! Search Marketing Account, PPC Hero
• Dynamically Changing Price of Product Based on Search Ad, Search Engine Roundtable
• Seeing Through the Bearishness About ‘Hyperlocal’, Traffick
• Search Marketing In-house Spotlight: Shane Vaughan with Balihoo, Search Engine Journal
• StumbleUpon Serving Google AdSense Ads, Search Engine Journal
• Google kills click to call feature in Google Maps, Download Squad

Searching

• 7 Reasons Why Search Engines Don’t Return Relevant Results 100% of the Time, SEOmoz
• Powerset and hakia – Quest For The Semantic Web, Read/Write Web

SEM Industry

• 5 Books all Search Marketers Should Read, SEOmoz

SEO & SEM

• Whiteboard Friday – “You’re Not On The List”, SEOmoz
• Matt Cutts Confirms Nofollow FIX, DaveN
• The $10,000 Robots.txt File…Ouch!, SEO Book.com
• 5 Pros and Cons of SEO Consultant vs Agency, Online Marketing Blog
• Link Building is a Permanent Investment, Search Engine Watch

Social Media

• Facebook buys start-up Parakey for undisclosed sum, Reuters
• Specialized Social Search Engines: Where To Go?, Search Engine Roundtable

Video, Music & Image Search

• YouTube Launches Custom Player Feature, Techcrunch

Other Items

• Google is Pushing Jason Bourne in the YouTube Gadget?, SEOish
• The Guts of an Enterprise-Level Web Analytics Audit, Search Engine Watch
• Lexxe : Search Engine that Answers Exact Queries, Search Engine Journal

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