SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 28, 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:

• Is Google Losing Its Magic For Employees?
  Today’s Wall Street Journal featured an article entitled Start-Ups Make Inroads With Google’s Work Force, which focused on emerging potential retention problems at Google (in particular vs. Facebook). Yahoo has recently shed – both voluntarily and involuntarily – a number of high profile employees and suffered negative publicity from some…
• Buttons, Buttons — Let’s Clean Up The Feed Buttons!
  As part of adding our new "Lands" tabs to Search Engine Land last month, I cleaned up our feed page that helps people understand how to add our feeds to various feed readers. The biggest challenge was dealing with the inconsistent sizes of feed buttons from the different providers. I…
• Lawsuit: Google’s AdSense For Domains Program Contributes To Trademark Infringement
  Google Sued in Domainer Lawsuit–Vulcan Golf v. Google from Eric Goldman covers a new lawsuit in which Google is being sued for allegedly violating trademarks by helping domainers monetize “typosquatter” domains….
• Study: Good Brand Can Make Search Seem More Relevant
  Penn State released a report — Branding matters — even when searching — that claims the brand value of a search engine can make searchers believe results are better or worse than they are….
• Mossberg, Ask.com “Goes Much Further” Than Google
  Ask.com Takes Lead In Designing Display Of Search Results by Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal reviews Ask.com’s new 3D look. Mossberg gave Ask.com great reviews, comparing Ask.com’s three-pane approach to Google’s Universal Search approach. Mossberg said Ask.com “took greater strides” than Google with their user interface. The new…
• 21 Essential SEO Tips & Techniques
  Small businesses are growing more aware of the need to understand and implement at least the basics of search engine optimization. But if you read a variety of small businesses blogs and Web sites, you’ll quickly see that there’s a lot of uncertainty over what makes up “the basics.”…
• Google Desktop Now Available For Linux
  Google Desktop is now available for those running Linux as their operating system. You’ll find Google Desktop for Linux for download here.. Google Desktop for Linux was developed by Google’s Beijing engineering team and runs on Debian 4.0, Fedora Core 6, Ubuntu 6.10, SUSE 10.1, and Red Flag 5. The…
• Google Gadget Ventures: Get Paid To Develop Google Gadgets
  How do you help encourage the growth of a widgets or gadgets ecosystem? Being big is a good, natural start. It has helped people flock to develop Facebook applications or Yahoo Widgets or Google Gadgets, just for exposure to the traffic at these places. But Google wants to encourage with…
• Google Now Reporting Number Of Users Per Gadget
  Got a Google Gadget? Google’s now reporting how many users make use of it, in addition to the pageviews figures it started posting earlier this year. The new user stats can be found via Google’s Homepage Content Directory. There you’ll see gadgets that can be added to your iGoogle…

Search News Headlines From Elsewhere

Applications & Portal Features

• Limited Reporting Delays, Google Analytics Blog
• 10 Cool Things you can do with IndexTools, Stone Temple

• Google Pack Homepage Redesign, Google Blogoscoped

Business Issues

• Yahoo! 2.0: Its Reorganization and Future, Read/Write Web

• comScore,SEMDirector Partner For Full-Scale Search Analytics, MediaPost Publications
• Start-Ups Make Inroads With Google’s Work Force, Wall Street Journal

• NBCU-NWS JV Gets CEO Former Amazon Exec Jason Kilar, paidContent.org

• Commercial Referential Trademark Uses (Rescuecom v. Google Amicus Brief Outtakes), Eric Goldman
• Google woos media planners, FT.com

Conferences

• Google’s Marissa Mayer on The Future of Search, Read/Write Web

• Marissa Mayar, VP of Google on The Future of Search and Announcing Google Gadget Ventures “We pay you $100,000″, Web Strategist

Link Building

• 7 Ways to Promote Your Content as Link Bait, Search Engine Watch

• 9 Tips for Getting Started with Link Building, Search Engine Watch Blog

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google’s Place Rank and Interestingness - Ranking Geographic Entities in Maps/Earth for Display, SEO By The Sea
• AOL offers shoppers Shortcuts coupons, E-Consultancy

• Google Earth Makes Some Officials Nervous, New York Times Blog

• It’s a click & drag situation, Google Lat Long Blog

Paid Search & Contextual

• Internet advertising: going up, up, up, News.com
• Keep PPC Conversion Expectations Real, Pay Per Click, Adwords, Google, Yahoo, Panama, Conversion, AIM Clear Blog

• Search Ad Sellers Should Help CTRs More, Search Engine Watch Blog

• Rumor: Microsoft Testing AdSense Like ContentAds with Smaller Publishers, Search Engine Roundtable
• YSM’s Quirky Little Feature, Optimize Ad Display, PPC Hero

Searching

• It’s Summer Time – Happy Travels, Yahoo Search Blog

SEM Industry

• Fate of MarketingSherpa SEO Buyer’s Guide Up in the Air, FathomSEO

• New Marketing Sherpa SEM Benchmark Survey, Online Marketing Blog

SEO & SEM

• Bringing SEO In House - Insight from the Experts Part 5, Web Analytics World
• Search Engine Friendly URL’s explained, Ogletree SEO
• 10 SEO Tips with Li Evans, SEO Beginning Podcast
• How Often Should You Update Your Content?, Search Engine Roundtable

Social Media

• Welcome to Feedster, Version 2.0!, Feedster
  
• Weblog/Feed Search: Feedster 2.0 Now Online, ResourceShelf
• First look at Pownce, Webware
• Thoof Now in Public Beta, Techcrunch
• Facebook Out of Control?, Jeremy Zawodny
• six questions for facebook, Vanessa Fox

Video, Music & Image Search

• Has Google Images indexing speed increased?, SEOptimise
• Movie Association Sues 2 Internet Sites, New York Times
• Maybe Google Universal Search Didn’t Notice The Anal Sex?, InsideGoogle
• Google and Music Downloads, News.com
• MySpace Rivals YouTube: A Comparison of Both Services, Search Engine Roundtable

Other Items

• New advisory group on health, Google Blog