SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 17, 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:

• SES NY Day One Live Coverage Recap
  The first day of SES NY is now complete. Here is the live blogging coverage I found throughout the day for the event. I’ll add any new coverage to tomorrow’s recap….
• Yahoo Partners With 3rd Party Click Fraud Company, Click Forensics
  Yahoo and Click Forensics have partnered to combat click fraud together. The partnership was announced on the Auditing Paid Listings and Click Fraud Issues panel at SES NY today. Yahoo said: Click Forensics will allow advertisers to securely share relevant account information, such as site-side click behavioral data, with Yahoo!….
• Search Biz: Google Pays More For DoubleClick, Benefits More From Online Ad Shift, AOL’s Platform A Coming Together & More
  Last week, as you know, the EU gave approval to Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick for $3.1 billion. However the deal closed at $3.24 billion, a mere $140 million more. But Google doesn’t have to count its pennies during this recession, the company says, because its international growth, specifically in…
• Local Mobile Search Takes Center Stage as Next-Generation Format of Yellow Pages: Industry Panel Weighs In
  The importance of valuable mobile content and services is undeniable—just observe the sea of people talking, text messaging and searching on mobile devices in nearly every personal and business setting these days. What remains to be seen, however, is which local mobile services and companies will rise to the…
• Early Yahoo Postmortem, And Google CEO Eric Schmidt On The Prospect Of MicroHoo
  If the Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo does happen the “postmortems” on Yahoo will come fast and furious. Perhaps the first of these is from the Mercury News, which recounts the history of Google and Yahoo’s early relationship and how the latter essentially “made” Google, which went on to become its…
• Microsoft Launches New adCenter Community Site
  Microsoft has announced the launch of the new adCenter Community today. The new site replaced the old blog and forums and can be found at adcentercommunity.com. Features include: Product/Service specific blogsCategorized User ForumsMultimedia Distribution including video interviews, audio podcasts and training videosUser profiles…
• St. Patrick’s Day 2008 Via Search Engines
  Happy St. Patrick’s Day Search Engine Land readers! The search industry is buzzing with special logos, themes, and trinkets for the special day. Here is a run down of logos from Google, Yahoo, DogPile, and some blogs….
• The State Of Search Engine Marketing 2007
  Slowdown? What slowdown? The future looks bright for search, according to SEMPO’s annual State of Search Engine Marketing report. The survey of search marketers and advertisers says that search engine marketing spending exceeded expectations in 2007 and is projected to show continued robust growth over the coming years. “For us…
• How To Improve Site Conversion, Minimize Google Ad Cost, And Reduce Your Carbon Footprint
  With Google’s recent announcement about page load time influencing Quality Score, now is a good time to discuss site speed. Speed matters. People rate snappy, responsive sites as more usable, even when the user interface itself doesn’t change. If your architecture or design aren’t that great, your users will…

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• A Very Special Google Docs Feature (Potential Spoiler), Google Blogoscoped
• Google Ad Manager: It’s bigger than it looks, BuzzMachine
• How we improved performance on Google Code, Google Code Blog
• Explore Your Interactions with Google Reader, Google Operating System
• OpenX vs Google Ad Manager, Read/Write Web
• Yahoo’s "Unlimited" Email Hits Its Limit, Wall Street Journal

Business Issues

• Google to competitors: I drink your milkshake, News.com
• The price of coddling Google – how Yahoo lost its way, Mercury News
• How Yahoo lost its way – from investing in Google to missed opportunities, Mercury News
• It’s getting toasty at Google, smh.com.au
• YAHOO Acquires Israeli Foxytunes, Israeli Diamond
• AOL Highlights Platform-A Integration Focus With Unified Search Marketing Services, paidContent.org
• Barry Diller Conquered. Now He Tries to Divide., New York Times
• Eight Years Later, Vivisimo Raises $4 Million For Enterprise Search., TechCrunch
• Google Chief Sees Buffer to Dollar, Wall Street Journal
• Google Makes DoubleClick Employees Apply To Keep Their Jobs, Silicon Alley Insider
• Google R&D spend increases by 73 per cent, The Inquirer

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Add Places to Google Maps, Google Operating System
• AT&T’s Yellowpages.com To Post Ads On Microsoft Sites, CNN Money
• Deer Blogs His Own GPS Position in Google Earth, Google Earth Blog
• Google Fixes Major Maps Bug on Firefox for Macs, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Maps offers Instant User Created Locations, Mike Blumenthal
• Google: We didn’t help the NSA (or did we?), cNet

Link Building

• 3 Ways to Make Article Marketing Work, Link Building Best Practices
• Google Webmaster Tools External Links Report Showing 0 Links, Search Engine Roundtable
• Productivity, How-to and Advice Sites: Making Linkbait Useful Again, Read/Write Web
• So Many Ways to Pursue Links and So Little Time, SEOmoz

Microhoo

• Imagine There’s a MicroHoo (It’s Easy If You Try), AllThingsD
• Eric Schmidt: MicroHoo Deal Could ‘Break’ the Internet, Wired
• Microsoft, Yahoo Execs Finally Meet, The Associated Press
• Microsoft bid may be Yahoo’s only choice, SeattlePi
• Yahoo showing signs of life, albeit too late, News.com

Paid Search & Contextual

• The Google Content Network Isn’t So Scary: Here’s How To Make It Work, PPC Hero
• Using AdSense Link Units in the footer , JenSense
• When is Display Right for Me?, Yahoo Publisher Network Blog
• Web Analytics & The adCenter Add-in for Excel 2007, AdCenter Blog
• API Live Meeting Conference Call Tomorrow – adCenter API, adcentercommunity.com
• Google Adwords Cross Campaign GEO Targeting, SEO Speedwagon
• Tips for Google Site and Category Exclusion Tool, Search Engine Watch
• Webinar: Getting The Most From Your Print Campaigns, Inside AdWords
• Working with the Ad Review Center, Inside AdSense

Searching

• Radical Idea For News Sites: Show What’s New On Your Homepage, Publishing 2.0
• Useful Content Restrictions for Yahoo Search, Google Operating System
• Dusting Off the Archive for the Web, New York Times
• Updated: Databases: Chronicling America Newspaper Site Adds More Pages, Features, ResourceShelf
• What would you like to see hakia do?, Hakia Blog

SEM Industry

• SES New York 2008: Web On! Apply Directly to Your Site WebProNews Videos, WebProNews
• SEO Career Training: Search Marketing Education, Reality SEO
• WBP buys SEOClass.com, and offers 4 Live Training Dates, Jim Boykin
• SES New York 2008 Day .5, Online Marketing Blog
• Finding Recession-Proof SEM Jobs, Search Engine Watch
• Happy SES New York 2008 St. Paddy’s Day, AIM Clear Blog
• SEO Roadshow 2008 Ready to Rumble, Fantomaster

SEO & SEM

• Whiteboard Friday – Webmaster Central Secrets with Susan Moskwa, SEOmoz
• How To Optimize Images For Search Engines, Social Media and People, SEO Smarty
• Live Product Upload in Down, WebOptimist.com
• Product Search and Checkout – A Perfect Match, Official Google Checkout Blog
• Tips for making information universally accessible, Official Google Webmaster Central Blog
• Incomplete and Wrong Data in Google Local Search, SEO By The Sea
• Results of Google Experimentation – Only the First Anchor Text Counts, SEOmoz
• Use Crawlscore for Optimizing Niche Web Sites, Jason Bartholme
• What’s the Difference Between SEO and SEM?, Ad Age
• Google Adds "Malicious Behavior" To Google Webmaster Guidelines, Search Engine Roundtable
• Guide to Geo Targeting for SEO and Usability, BlogStorm
• How to Organize Your Keyword Modifiers to Create Long Tail Strategy, Search Engine Journal
• SEOs Don’t Need an Information Retrieval Degree, All Things SEM
• What Google SERP Changes Mean to Marketers, ClickZ

Social Media

• FriendFeed vs SocialThing!, Read/Write Web
• Yahoo Buzz: Yahoo Reveals Stats From The First Two Weeks, TechCrunch
• 6 Ways to Make Better Friends on StumbleUpon, OldSchool SEO

Video, Music & Image Search

• Comscore: YouTube dominance grows, VentureBeat
• One question on Flickr Video: Why?, mathewingram.com
• Video Coming To Flickr Soon. Really., TechCrunch

Web Analytics

• Introducing Google Analytics Seminars for Success, Google Analytics Blog
• New Help Articles from Google Analytics Authorized Consultants, Google Analytics Blog

Other Items

• A Funny Moment At The Flickr Party Tonight, TechCrunch
• The 4th of Flickr, Yodel Anecdotal
• Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: March 16, 2008, Search Engine Roundtable
• June 3-10 named ‘Internet Week’, Variety
• The Google Story, Bob Massa

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

• How to Sell your Client on a Blog Strategy
• Results of Google Experimentation – Only the First Anchor Text Counts
• Is MSN Lying About Their Referrer Spam?
• How Search Really Works: The Compressed Index
• How to Use Wordpress as a Membership Directory
• Oh My Christ, They Got Facebook
• Have we run out of good SEO/SEM topics to write about?
• PPC Triage Now! Emergency Action Steps for Dying AdWords
• How to Grow Your Blog with Viral Copy
• Achieving Ah-Ha Blog-NOW Moments With Small Business Clients
• Are You the Underdog in Sphinn? Where’s YOUR Vote?
• Are you an Egocentric Blogger?
• Image Optimization 101
• 17 Ways to Visualize the Twitter Universe
• Twitter Haiku For Quality Tweats
• Google Indented Results… From a Different Domain?
• Stumbleupon Now Using Captcha for Reviews
• If You Don’t Like Blogging … Stop Blogging
• How to Build a Successful News Blog
• Banned By Google: UK University Outs US MFA Sites
• Official: General Web Directories Are Dead – JoeAnt is PageRank 3, More Aggressive Hand Editing by Google
• Del.icio.us Drops the Dots as Site Gets Makeover
• Help out a fellow SEO with Beards for the Cause Foundation
• Why People You Follow on Twitter Don’t Follow You Back
• Using Wikipedia To Reveal Web Traffic Data