SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 12, 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:

• New Purple Yahoo Logo To Demonstrate Its New Start?
  TechCrunch reports that Yahoo is testing out a new purple logo. The new logo, as shown in the picture from TechCrunch, shows Yahoo changed the font to a more curvy look and went from red to a purple color. Danny and I wonder if the new logo, if it happens,…
• Search Biz: Yahoo-Microsoft Talks Over! Google CEO Downplays iPhone Conflict, Says Google Has No “Evilmeter,” & The Argument Against MSFT CEO Steve Ballmer
  Today’s Search Biz is a nearly all Google column. Barry wrote about departures at Yahoo and Ask, which were originally part of today’s roundup. So today’s column is mostly culled from a series of interviews in which Google CEO Eric Schmidt opines about a range of topics, from Android-iPhone competition…
• Live Search Tests Home Page Skins
  The LiveSide Blog reports that Live Search is testing out a new feature that allows users to customize the skin or background of the Live.com home page. The LiveSide Blog has a screen capture of one of the skins, a couple in a lake. If you look at the right-bottom…
• Everything You Wanted To Know About Blocking Search Engines
  Last week, the three major search engines came together to say how they agree — and disagree — over the Robots Exclusion Protocol. It’s such an important standard, one every webmaster should understand. To help, Vanessa Fox has compiled an extensive and outstanding overview of it at Jane &…
• Zawodny Leaves Yahoo; Weiner To Go? And Linsley Departs Ask
  Two big names have left Yahoo and Ask and speculation is that a third is to go. Below, more about he departures of Yahoo’s Jeremy Zawdony, Ask’s Peter Linsley and Yahoo’s Jeffrey Weiner who is rumored to be leaving soon….
• Google Logo Meets Hooters
  People are always interested in the Google logo especially as they often change it. But anyone searching now for google logo might get a surprise, as noted by Ari. As all the relevant images Google could have shown in the top three, Google picked this one as the second…
• Video Search Engine Start-Up Yidio Vies For Market Share
  The launch of Yidio, a new video search engine start-up, shows that investors feel there is still an opportunity to earn market share in video search. Yidio is a division of 2ten Media and debuted in the beginning of June. The San Diego based search engine indexes content from…
• SMX Advanced: Black, Blue And Read All Over
  Learning is a fundamental and highly adaptive function in human beings. More than any other species, humans are designed to be flexible learners and active agents in how we go about acquiring knowledge and skills. Yet much of what people learn happens without any formal instruction. Think about it….
• Want To Bid On Search Engine Land’s Redesign & Redevelopment Project?
  Search Engine Land will be going through a redesign in about two months, which we think will make it easier for people to find the vast amount of content we have here and publish each day. Our design and development spec is all set. Now it’s just time to…

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Gmail.com Domain Made Disfunctional In Germany, Google Blogoscoped
• Live Search adds nice twist to live.com: background picture(s), LiveSide

Business Issues

• Google CEO: Stock Split ‘Unlikely’, FOXBusiness.com
• A Decade of Deals at Yahoo, Portfolio.com
• Eight Years of Wrongness, MSFTextrememakeover
• Google Hiring Spree Slowing Down; Yahoo Openings Up, But Recruiting Trouble Expected, paidContent.org
• Great Moments In Pr: Google menaces blog over publishing YouTube contract, Valleywag

Conferences

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Edit Google’s Mobile Homepage, Google Operating System
• Disappearing Forests Google Earth Visualizations, Google Earth Blog
• Imagine Every YP Category As a Vertical, Screenwerk
• The Growing List of Things You Can Do With Google Maps, Google Blogoscoped

Link Building

• A Great Link Building Tool, Link Building Best Practices
• Think Links from New Sites Have Little Value? Think Again, Search Engine Watch

Paid Search & Contextual

• AdCenter Optimization Quick Reference Guide – adCenter Advertiser, www.adcentercommunity.com
• Hierarchy Is Key To Creating An Effective PPC Strategy, SEM Geek
• hakia Adds 10 million PubMed Articles to its Semantic Search Engine, Hakia Blog
• Is Google Using Behavioral Targeting Off the Search Page for Better Search Ads?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Join us on July 10 for ‘Powered By YouTube’, Inside AdSense
• The Choice is Yours, Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog
• UK PPC Research & Retail Vertical News From adCenter, adcentercommunity.com
• Using APIs to Mashup Ads & Landing Pages, Jonathan Mendez’s Blog
• Yahoo Search Marketing Getting Stingy on Click Fraud Credits?, Search Engine Roundtable

Searching

• Introducing the AJAX Patent Search API, Google AJAX Search API Blog
• The Biggest Searchable Jewish Library Online, altsearchengines.com
• Google Code Search Shows Function Outline, Google Blogoscoped
• Live Search Cashback vs. Google: A Case Study, Search Engine Watch
• Twingly Blog Search Engine Now Public (With Widgets), TechCrunch
• Yandex Launches Mobile Search In Russia, altsearchengines.com

SEM Industry

• SES Toronto and MarketMotive – Competitive Webmaster Tools Seminar, Stuntdubl
• Prepping for Google’s Udi Manber Keynote: Another Datawocky Scoop :, Beyond Search
• What Is SEO These Days?, Cre8PC

SEO & SEM

• How to improve your blog’s performance, Brisbane SEO Blog
• Why Apple isn’t UK enough for Google, SEOmoz
• Tune Your Site Search to Sell: June Multichannel Merchant Column, Rimm Kaufman
• 6 Educated Theories Behind Google SiteLinks, Search Engine Journal
• Country-Coded Top-Level Domains Do Not Rank Worse in Google.com, Search Engine Roundtable
• Reputation management tips for SEO, E-Consultancy
• What’s the Cutoff Length for Meta Tags?, Search Engine Roundtable

Social Media

• Friendfeed Can Disrupt Search and Reshape Advertising, Micro Persuasion
• How to Get Traffic from the top Social Media Sites, ViperChill
• OpenSocial Updates: hi5, AOL, MySpace and imeem, CenterNetworks
• Sexism Runs Rampant on Reddit (and maybe the rest of the social web), SEOmoz

Video, Music & Image Search

• Has Google Fixed The Image Search Filter?, Search Engine Roundtable

Web Analytics

• A Way To Make Testing Easier, Official Google Website Optimizer Blog

Other Items

• Spanking new developer guide, Google Custom Search

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

• 22 DoFollow Social Media Sites Offering Profile Links
• Top 10 Fatal Localisation Mistakes
• SEOmoz Penalised By Google For Web 2.0 Awards
• Black Hat SEO discussed at SMX Advanced – Shock Horror » SEO Chicks
• SEO, Colored Hats & The Pollyanna Pissing Match
• How To Do Retargeting Cheaply and Build Branded Search Demand
• 7 Stupid Social Media Mistakes – Are you making them?
• Matt Cutts Hacked .. again!!! — (not really, it was just a server hiccup silly)
• 10 Common SEO Mistakes
• A Sucky Interface is Better Than No Interface
• The Secret to Agency SEO
• 18 Super Useful Ways To Use Twitter
• Playing With Bots – Interview w/ Stephan Spencer
• Trust the Linkers, Not The Links
• 10 Unusual Truths about Social Media
• False Prophecy: Onsite SEO Will Be History
• SMX Advanced 2008 – Top 10 Nuggets of Knowledge
• Unwritten Laws of Social Media
• Plurk to UnVeil New Karma System
• 8 Lessons You Should Learn From Your Online Competitors