SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 21, 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:

• European Union To Question Data Retention Policies Of Other Search Engines
  EU data protection group questions other search engines from InfoWorld reports that the European Union will expand their investigation beyond just Google and investigate other search engine provider’s data retention policies. Peter Hustinx, European Data Protection Supervisor, told us this in an interview last night. Danny is quoted in the…
• Two Top Google Engineers Leave Google
  Two top Google engineers leave — to Benchmark Capital from VentureBeat reports Bret Taylor and Jim Norris, top Google engineers, have left Google to work at Benchmark Capital, a venture capital firm. Taylor and Norris were largely responsible for the development of Google Maps as well as other Google products….
• Yahoo Search Ads Now Truncated To 70 Characters
  As expected, Yahoo has confirmed that as of now, all Yahoo Search Marketing ad descriptions that are longer than 70 characters will be truncated to fit the new size requirement. There still is an optional 190-character long description box, which may be used on some of Yahoo’s distributing partner sites….
• Yahoo Acquires College Sports Site, Rivals.com
  Yahoo has acquired Rivals.com, an online college sports site. Yahoo said this acquisition “will significantly expand the community offerings and open publishing capabilities of Yahoo! Sports.” Although Yahoo did not discuss the financial matters of the agreement, paidContent.org suspects it was about $100 million….
• The Users Are Revolting
  Flickr has recently introduced content filters, allowing users more control over what images they view, and to ensure that they don’t get nasty surprises by accidently viewing some of the more adult images that are hosted. However, while this is a useful option, the option of turning it off has…
• Google Pay-Per-Action Beta Goes Global
  Google launched Pay Per Action ads to a very limited user base on March 20. Now, Google is launching this beta product globally. Google Pay Per Action is a new pricing model available to advertisers to specify a dollar amount they would like to offer publishers for successful conversions. Advertisers…

Search News Headlines From Elsewhere

Applications & Portal Features

• Share Your iGoogle, Google Blogoscoped
• Let’s get financial, Google Finance Blog
• LG Unveils Genuine Google Phone, The Korea Times

Business Issues

• New Ask.com Commercial: Kato, InsideGoogle
• Learning From Microsoft’s Error, Google Builds a Lobbying Engine, washingtonpost.com

• Who should buy Yahoo?, GigaOM

• Google says Vista search changes not enough, Arstechnica

Conferences

• Siamo tornati dall’ SES di Milano!, Google Webmaster Central Blog
• Reader Poll: Best City for Conferences, Online Marketing Blog

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Three new KML resources up, Google Maps API Blog
• Local Search for Sweden and Denmark Launched, Google AJAX Search API Blog

Paid Search & Contextual

• Blinkx’s Project Trilby: AdSense For Video, Business 2.0
• Meet an India payments specialist, Google AdSense Blog
• Reprise Report on Panama, John Battelle
• PPC vs. Organic Keywords: How To Know Where to Put The Big Bucks, Reviewlicious
• Do You Want a Google AdWords Search Engine?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Microsoft adCenter Adds Negative Keywords to Campaigns, Search Engine Roundtable

Searching

• Exalead surges in French search, E Consultancy

SEM Industry

• A look into an search engine marketer’s life, Scobleizer

SEO & SEM

• Content Strategies: Bulk Content vs Higher Quality Information, SEO Book
• What My Builders Taught Me About Link Building, Viper Chill
• When Choosing an eCommerce System, Remember the Search Engines, SEO By The Sea
• [Video] Public Relations & Search Engine Optimization, SEO Book.com
• Does Your Site Deserve Link Love?, Search Engine Watch
• Link Building keep adding links monthly, DaveN
• How to Make AJAX Techniques Safe for Search Engines, Cre8pc

Social Media

• Searchles Tries to Bridge the Gap Between Social Search and Social Networking, Bill Hartzer
• Digg Overtakes Facebook with 1400% Growth, 22.6 Million Uniques, Read/Write Web

Video & Image Search

• Don’t Lose Your Google Image Search Traffic, stefanjuhl.com
• ScienceHack: Human Edited Science Video Search, Rev2org
• Youtube Give Users FTP Details away, DaveN
• YouTube to eclipse BBC’s homepage, Telegraph

Other Items

• Slide Show Control now available as a Google Gadget, Google AJAX API Blog
• Mahalo Blog Gives Links to People it Thinks Are Spammers, Wolf Howl
• Askville Update, Search Engine Watch Blog
• Google and open source OCR, Official Google Blog