SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 23, 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:

• comScore: Slight Google Rise, Status Quo With Rest In February 2007
  Now having covered the latest search popularity figures from Hitwise and Nielsen//NetRatings, it’s time to look at those out from comScore. It’s mostly the same old news — Google up a bit, everyone else holding steady. Here are the figures, which cover the percentage of home, work and university searches…
• NetRatings: Google Spike, Live.com Rise In February 2007
  Earlier I wrote of the latest search popularity stats out from Hitwise and said those from other companies would be coming. Next up, Nielsen//NetRatings. The most recent figures out (PDF format) for February 2007 from NetRatings show a significant Google gain at Yahoo’s expense. Live.com also shows a notable gain….
• Scanning Consideration Sets And Their Importance To Search Marketers
  The magic number seven, plus or minus two As humans, we have a limited capacity to consider our alternatives. Within our brains, there is a limited amount of shelf space available for us to temporarily put our options on to examine them and make our decision. We have cognitive limits…
• Google Maps API Adds KML And GeoRSS Support
  There’s a lot to say about Google Earth, Maps and the innovation and activity going on there than there is time for now. Maps/Earth (and maybe Coop/CSE) is where Google is building its social media franchise. There’s a longer post for the future. For now, Google has added support for…
• Google Wins Case On Google Suggest Brought By ServersCheck
  Belgian company loses lawsuit against Google at IT World reports that Google has won a suit brought against them by ServersCheck, a Belgian company. ServersCheck sued Google on May 17, 2006 and the court ruled in favor of Google. ServersCheck said that Google Suggest returned results for “ServersCheck Crack,” ServersCheck…
• NBC & News Corp’s “OverTube” Not A YouTube-Killer — It Might Just Power Those
  I’ve been traveling the past three days so am catching up on news — including that of the new supposed YouTube-killer being launched by NBC Universal & News Corp. But while the official release calls this a new "site" coming later this year, more reading makes it clear we’re talking…
• Google Tests Navigation Links In Header Of Search Page
  Google Operating Systems reports that Google is testing a new interface for how they currently display the navigation links at Google.com. Google moved the links that used to be directly above the search box and directly under the Google logo, towards the top left of the page, parallel to the…
• Viacom Sued For Allegedly Forcing Removal Of YouTube Video
  Viacom Sued Over YouTube Parody Removal from Wired reports that Viacom has been sued by an activist group for allegedly forcing YouTube to remove a video of “The Colbert Report.” Wired says that Viacom is playing dumb, where Viacom said “it had no records of ever making such a request.”…
• Michael Moritz, Google Board Of Director, Not To Be Re-Elected
  Google announced that Michael Moritz, a Google board of director member since May 1999, said he will not seek re-election. Michael Moritz is a general partner of Sequoia Capital, before joining Sequoia in 1986 he worked at Time Warner and founded Technologic Partners. “I’m delighted to have played a role…
• President Jimmy Carter Speaks at Google’s Atlanta Office
  President Jimmy Carter gave the welcoming remarks for Google Atlanta’s Open House Thursday. President Carter stated that his life has been transformed by Google, and that it would be hard to find many people in the developed world for whom that statement isn’t true. He gave a specific example of…
• Destination Marketing: SEM Without Compromise
  Question: Why does your website deserve to be #1? Because I have the lowest prices Because I have better customer service Because I’ve been in business longer Because no one does this better than me None of the above The correct answer is:…

Search News Headlines From Elsewhere

Applications & Portal Features

• Blog Bar Update, Google AJAX Search API Blog
• Google Releases New Version of Google Spreadsheets V1.2.0i, Search Engine Roundtable

Business Issues

• Shopping.com Management Changes, ComparisonEngines.com

• Infoserve up a third on Yahoo! deal, ShareCast
• China’s Baidu launches Japanese language search website, Forbes.com

• Google Didn’t Pay for Their Traffic, Traffick

• Where Is Microsoft Search?, BusinessWeek
  

Paid Search & Contextual

• Letting Advertisers Decide Upon Values of Ads: Impressions, Click-Throughs, and Pay-Per-Action, SEO by the SEA
• New AdWords Campaign Optimisation feature, SEOptimise
• First Screen Shots Of Google Pay Per Action In Action, Search Engine Roundtable

SEM Industry

• 5 Reasons to Attend Search Engine Strategies NYC, Online Marketing Blog
• Wise leaves Did-it for Right Media Remix, DMNews

SEO & SEM

• Exposing SEO Myths: Inbound Links Hurt, SEO Refugee Blog
• The Secret to Making Sales on the Internet and to SEO Domination, SEOcritique.com
• Wasting Time or Clearly Incompetent – The SEO Consulting Debate, SEOmoz
• Remapping Dynamic URLs to Static URLs can Increase Traffic, Search Engine Watch Blog
  

Social Media

• New site aims to be the YouTube of gaming, Reuters
• Your (Growing) Google Reader Team, Google Reader Blog
• Google Reader Still Could Be So Much More, Pronet Advertising

Other Stuff

• Yahoo Search Page Changes, ResourceShelf
• To watch a guide-dog fly, Official Google Blog
• Optimizing Business Communications for Search, Online Marketing Blog
• Searching for HR innovation and community, Google Blog