SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 11, 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:

• Search In Pictures: Mazel Tov Gary, Psychedelic Google, Taylor Hicks At Yahoo
  In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have and more….
• Searcharazzi: Calacanis and the Case of the Mystery Project
  Sherlock, get out your magnifying glass. Clues have been scattered everywhere and there is a mystery to be solved. This is no Whodunnit; Jason Calacanis, founder of Weblogs, Inc., is clearly the mastermind. While there are no bodies on the ground yet, Calacanis has marked July 14, 2007 as…
• Real Estate Search Engine Trulia Redesigns, Adds Community
  Real estate search site Trulia has redesigned, creating a new presentation on search results pages with more advanced property filters. But beyond this it has added “Trulia Voices,” a new community area for people to ask open-ended questions and discuss neighborhoods, schools, etc. Competitor Zillow recently also added community (Zillow…
• Microsoft Thinking Of Testing Mouse Over Image Ads In Live.com Search Results
  John Battelle has posted a screen capture from a presentation given by Gary Flake of Microsoft showing a new approach to search ads. The search ads on the Live.com search results have a little icon next to them, when you mouse over those icons, up comes a larger image or…
• Google Gets A Tag Line: “Search, Ads & Apps”
  To my knowledge, Google never had a tag line. Yesterday, it announced it had gained one: "Search, Ads & Apps." But wasn’t the tag line "Don’t Be Evil?" Or wasn’t it something about organizing the world’s information? Come along, and I’ll try to sort it out. Google has a mission…
• Political Candidates Need Serious SEO Help
  Whether DNC or RNC, Political Candidates need SEO from SEOmoz takes a look at the current political landscape in the search results. What we learned from this article is that the U.S. political candidates need some serious help with SEO and search marketing. For example, John McCain’s web site currently…
• Google Stops Sending Penalty Notification Emails Due To Fake Warnings
  Vanessa Fox posted an update to fake German Google webmaster penalty notifications that I reported yesterday. In that post, she explained that the emails sent from donotreply@gmail.com warning that your site will be banned from the Google.de index are fake. Google will temporarily be halting the notification of webmaster penalty…
• Court Says It’s OK To ‘Google’ Your Employees
  Steve Bryant at Google Watch reports that a court has ruled it is OK to ‘Google’ your employees. The case goes back to the firing of David M. Mullins from the U.S. Commerce Department for “misusing a government vehicle and credit card and falsifying travel documents,” says CSO. Mullins claimed,…
• Google To Continue To Censor Results, Shareholders Agree
  Google Shareholders Vote Against Anti-Censorship Proposal from PC World reports that Google’s shareholders sided with Google and voted down the anti-censorship proposal spearheaded by the New York City pension funds and the Office of the Comptroller of New York City. In short, a majority of shareholders sided with Google, which…
• Thailand Changes Mind, Won’t Sue Google Over Insulting King
  Thailand Drops Plan to Sue Google from the Associated Press reports that Thailand has changed their mind on suing Google over the insulting videos of their king that were posted at YouTube. Vissanu Meeyoo, the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology spokesman said, “We decided not to sue Google because…
• From My Inbox: More Defense Of SEO
  I spent about a half-hour today defending SEO privately in an email to someone questioning it. Upon reflection, I thought those responses should go into a public post. After all, the discussion involved Stephen Colbert, the great Jason Calacanis mystery project that will kill SEO as well as those scumbag…

Search News Headlines From Elsewhere

Applications & Portal Features

• Pimp Your iGoogle With These Greasemonkey Hacks, Mashable

• New Analytics designers forgot some things, Googling Google

• Add Outlook to your Google homepage, Lifehacker

Business Issues

• Who’s afraid of Google? / Firms in Silicon Valley and beyond fear search giant’s plans for growth, SFGate.com
• Google sees mergers big and small, Reuters

• Google Shareholders Still a Happy Bunchm, Forbes.com

• Google Has No Plans to Split Stock, Wall Street Journal
• Blog search engine Technorati tops off with $11.52 million, VentureBeat
• 24/7 Real Media On The Block, Officially, PaidContent.org
• Dutch Domain Owner Faces Legal Action From Google, PC World
• Yahoo to establish server farm, IcelandReview
• Search-Related Legal Updates, Search Engine Watch Blog
• Google to expand operations in Hyderabad, NewKerala.Com

Conferences

• Recapping SEW Live: Columbus, Search Engine Guide

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Giant Building Found in Google Earth, Google Earth Blog
• New Local Onebox leads to truncated business names, Blumenthals
• Google Earth in Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Polish, Korean, Arabic, and Czech, Google Earth Blog
• Yahoo’s Clickable Map Advertising with Product Inventory Displays, SEO By The Sea
• Google Maps Japan Has Little Icons, InsideGoogle

Paid Search & Contextual

• A clarification on accidental clicks, Inside AdSense Blog
• Short Descriptions Coming To Yahoo! Search Marketing Wednesday, Search Engine Roundtable

• Facebook to Offer Classifieds, Techcrunch

• Google Adsense Ads in Email Messages – Screenshot, Digital Inspiration

Podcasts

• Rush Hour Episode 12, Pronet Advertising

Searching

• Why Ask Me, and Does ‘X’ Mark the Spot?’, Ariadne Issue 51, Phil Bradley

• Powerset CEO talk at UW CS, Geeking With Greg

• Future directions for web search, Geeking With Greg

• Event Search Engine: Oyaka.com, Search Engine Watch Blog
• Moving firm tells Baidu to lift fake links, Shanghai Daily
• How To Build An Open Source, Distributed Google Clone, Read/Write Web
• Has Overuse of Bayesian Analysis Screwed Google Search?, Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life

• Look Mom- No Cookies!, Hakia Blog

• From Online Research to Offline Shopping, Search Engine Watch Blog
• Google Layouts Timeline, Google Blogoscoped

SEM Industry

• JobsInSearch.com selected for Weddle’s 2007/2008 Guide to Employment Web Sites, Jobs in Search

• Why We Need to Ignore Jason Calacanis, Threadwatch

• Search Insider Summit Wrap Up, Online Marketing Blog
• Reader Poll: Best Search Marketing News Mashups, Online Marketing Blog

• Interviewed on Mr. SEO Podcast, Karl Ribas

SEO & SEM

• Google & the WWW Issue, WebProNews

• Adam Lasnik of Google Responds to Webmasters Again, Search Engine Roundtable
• Does Rotating Content Hurt Your Search Engine Rankings?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Fun with Words. WordCount and QueryCount, Search Engine Journal
• Title Capitalization in the English Language, Search Engine Journal

• Whiteboard Friday – “Chasing Your Tail”, SEOmoz

• The Resurrection: PageRank, Sitewide Links and META Tags are Back!, Tropical SEO
• The Large Agency SEO Client How Does this Beast Differ?, Search Engine Watch
• SEM In-House Spotlight : Hewlett-Packard’s In-House SEO, Search Engine Journal
  

Social Media

• Gaming Digg, Leaving Digg, Copying Digg, Wired Blogs

• See Who’s Reading Your LinkedIn Profile, Techcrunch
• Sex Sells, Especially on Digg!, Search Engine Journal

Video & Image Search

• Our Little Baby’s all growed up!!!, AOL Video Blog
• Google Image Labeler Is More Exciting, Google Operating System
• Celebrating the Moms of the World, Yahoo Search Blog
• Exalead Enhancements to Image Search, Search Engine Watch Blog

Other Stuff

• Our Little Baby’s all growed up!!!, AOL Video Blog

• Google Image Labeler Is More Exciting, Google Operating System

• Celebrating the Moms of the World, Yahoo Search Blog