SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 30, 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:

• 
  Yahoo Search June 2008 Index Update
  Yahoo has warned us of an up and coming Yahoo Search index update. Priyank Garg & Sharad Verma of Yahoo Search said, Yahoo will “be rolling out some changes to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms over the next few days, but expect the update will be completed soon.” The…
• 
  Search Biz: Yahoo Morale Okay, Musical Chairs At Google, Microsoft, Marc Andreessen Joins Facebook Board & Tech Giants Fight “Patent Trolls”
  Lots of action for SearchBiz today; let’s start with Yahoo. Fortune reprints a purported Yahoo employee email that is very upbeat and flies in the face of the gloom and doom analysis going on in the blogs. Meanwhile TechCrunch reports on another executive loss at the company, while Carl “proxy…
• 
  Yahoo Officially Discontinued The Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool
  I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable that the Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool no longer takes you to the tool, instead it redirects you to the Yahoo Search Marketing landing page. I emailed Yahoo for a statement, and they have confirmed that they have decommissioned the tool. There are tools…
• 
  Google Blocks Anti-Obama Blogs Flagged Incorrectly As Spam
  My day started reading about how Google was reportedly censoring anti-Barack Obama blogs by shutting them down on Google-owned Blogger. I quickly did some debunking in a comment on our Sphinn site — but still, Google probably needs to do more to ensure its Blogger spam reporting tools aren’t…
• 
  Matt Cutts On SEO Tips & Fighting Spam
  Google’s Matt Cutts has recently provided some advice on SEO and explained how Google combats spam. Matt recently was interviewed by Jefferson Graham of USA Today. The article was named Google’s Cutts: Good directions drive traffic to your website. The article covers five topics of SEO including keyword phrases, title…
• 
  Competitors Taking Action Against Competitors For Search Ad Trademark Infringement
  Search ads trigger trademark lawsuit from rival from News.com reports on another search ad trademark lawsuit. This one differs in that the plaintiff is not suing a search engine, but rather suing his competitor. NameSafe sued LifeLock for allegedly allowing one of their resellers to show search ads with NameSafe’s…
• 
  Google Pushing Into TV, Original Content Distribution
  One could liken Google to a house that keeps expanding, with new room additions every few months. Google’s house is already the largest on the block and it seems to keep getting bigger. Two related moves represent further expansion. The first is the announcement last week of the Google Media…
• 
  Don’t Let Machines Write Your Keyword Lists
  As anyone who has seen the Terminator or Matrix movies can attest, if machines rule the world humans are in deep trouble. Similarly, if you allow machines to control the PPC keyword creation process you are guaranteed to both leave opportunity on the table and flush money down the…

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Export Data from Google’s Services, Google Operating System

Business Issues

• Citigroup adds Google, Time Warner to top picks live, Reuters

Local, Maps & Mobile

• The New Google Mobile Community, Official Google Mobile Blog
• Local and the Future of Ad Serving, Screenwerk
• Where is a map to mapping maps?, San Francisco Chronicle

Link Building

• Is That Directory Worth Submitting To?, The Link Spiel
• Buy or Sell Nofollow’d Contextual Link Ads, The SEO Scoop
• Top Ten Link Building Strategies, Search Marketing Sage

Paid Search & Contextual

• Yahoo and Rich Media Ads, SEOish
• Use Google Ad Manager To Set Minimum AdSense eCPM, Search Engine Roundtable

Searching

• Introducing our Program Manager interns for the summer, Live QnA
• Hakia Semantic Search Goes Mobile With Berggi, altsearchengines.com
• Google Search Comes to Netvibes, mashable.com

SEM Industry

• Neutered SEOs, PPC, Google Sheep, & Paid Links Gone Underground, AIM Clear Blog
• PPC Blog – SEO Book’s New Sister Site, SEO Book
• An Open Letter to SEO Bloggers: Back up Your Statements!, SEO Refugee

SEO & SEM

• Beyond the Top 10 SEO Factors, Scott Hendison
• Google "Do you mean" Results Baffling, www.weboptimist.com
• Keyword Research : Where to Start?, Search Engine Journal
• SEO Effectiveness: Spend Your Time Wisely, Search Engine Journal
• Is there a Minimum Number of Pages Required for Decent Organic Rankings?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Margae vs. Clear Link: The Dangers of Doing SEO By Commission and Not Having Good Contract Discipline, SEOmoz
• Moving to a U.S Hosted Server: Will it Impact Country Specific SEO?, Search Engine Roundtable
• 5 Common Crawlability Mistakes That Kill Your SEO Success, Small Business SEM

Social Media

• Google Talk As a Social Network, Google Operating System
• State of the Twitter, June 2008, Scripting News
• Recommendation Engine rolling out this week!, Digg the Blog
• Twitter Conversations Come To A Screaming Halt; Users Simply Move To Friendfeed, TechCrunch
• Replies Are Back, Improvements Continue, Twitter Blog
• What Does 50 Sphinns Get You? , Web Analytics World Blog
• Plurk Brings Micro Forums, Like Twitter Brought Micro Blogging, Search Engine Roundtable
• Plurk versus Twitter: They’re Not the Same, and Here’s Why, Techipedia
• SEO vs SMO – Traffic Quality Put To The Test, The SEO Scoop

Video, Music & Image Search

• Real purpose of YouTube annotations gets unnoticed as people dive into "birth of Long-Form video" discussions, Reactive Software Blog
• As New Car Sales Slide, Audience for Automotive Video Online Booms – ClickZ, ClickZ

Web Analytics

• Let’s Talk Analytics, Conversions, Cloaking, and More, WebProNews
• Measuring Media & Downloads From Your Site Using adCenter Analytics, www.adcentercommunity.com
• A Year In Web Analytics – 10 Things I Have Learned – adCenter Analytics, adcentercommunity.com

Other Items

• Google Euro Championship Doodle, Google Blogoscoped
• Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: June 29, 2008, Search Engine Roundtable

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

• Plurk versus Twitter: They're Not the Same, and Here's Why
• SEO vs SMO – Traffic Quality Put To The Test
• Research: Getting to the Roots of Your Site Visitor
• Matt Cutts is using your data to catch Spam
• My Thoughts On Ask.com & Core Search
• Sorry, Ask.com — I Still Don't Think You're Focused On Core Search
• 10 Minute Guide to Plurk – Cliques – The Great Idea with the Awful Name
• 50 Niche Search Engines That Will Make Your Everyday Life Easier
• How to Play the Odds Game and Win With Digg
• Shine A Light – How to explain link-theory to a layman
• Small Business Link Building: Part A – Analysing Opportunities
• You’re Not Just a Writer, You’re the Editor-in-Chief.
• An Email Marketing Tip Sheet
• My Avatar – Your Window to Me
• Trulia Caught Cloaking Red Handed
• Cut Out The Middle Man: Direct Blog Ad Sales – Private Ad Sales
• Digg Cleans Up Navigation, Candidates, and Adds Olympics
• An Open Letter to SEO Bloggers: Back up Your Statements!