SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 14, 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:

• Class Action Suit Filed Against Yahoo Over "Defective" Search Ad Platform
  Lerach Coughlin, a law firm with a reputation for going after companies who have allegedly engaged in financial shenanigans, has filed a class action lawsuit against Yahoo, charging "Yahoo and certain of its officers and directors with violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934." Essentially, the suit claims that…
• Green Cred: Yahoo Ups The Ante In Battle To Be The Greenest Search Engine
  Yahoo launched a big "green" initiative today, including a contest and two related websites — green.yahoo.com and better.yahoo.com/planet — helping to build consumer-user awareness about global warming and energy conservation, etc. It’s a laudable effort but one that takes on a different cast when viewed in the competitive world of…
• When Google Goes Temporarily Insane
  The recent Google update, known to some of us as the “Google shuffle”, had a number of people freaked out. Seeing your site’s ranking suddenly change is a reality we all face. Sometimes the changes are legitimate, reflecting a shift in the algorithm, or in the inbound link profile…
• Borrell: Paid Search Rising For Autos Category
  Automotive, Recruitment and Real Estate are three especially lucrative and important local advertising categories. They have been historically dominated by print newspapers, to the tune of about $17 billion last year in the U.S. But the Internet is gaining rapidly. A new report from Borrell Associates estimates that advertising in…
• Google Game Ads Patent Sets Off Privacy Debate
  Google may use games to analyse net users from The Guardian reports that Google is considering the idea of using gaming behavior to display targeted ads to that user. Privacy advocates are already voicing their distaste for the idea of gleaning information on users based on their gaming behaviors. To…
• Matt Cutts Revisits Google Rankings & Paid Links
  Matt Cutts of Google has updated his blog post How to report paid links this weekend. The update has a lot more detail on Google’s view of paid links. Let me summarize for you the new additions to the post….
• First Signs Of YouTube Inline Ads
  YouTube’s New Inline Ads: Screenshots from NewTeeVee has screen captures of the inline ads in YouTube that we have been anticipating for a while. The ads display at the bottom of the video, much like a text ad, but has a play button. When you click the play button on…
• New Ask Mobile Application Launched
  Reuters and the Wall Street Journal have broken the story early. Ask has launched a new GPS-powered mobile application that contains content from Citysearch and Evite (and other IAC properties in the future). In my quick demo of the phone I was impressed with its many features and capabilities. But…
• Wedding Congrats For Sergey & Gary
  Last weekend was apparently a big weekend when it came to weddings and search. Both big names in search got hitched — Gary Price and Sergey Brin. No, not to each other (not that there would be anything wrong with that, of course!). ResourceShelf editor and Ask.com search evangelist Gary…
• Special Sessions At SMX Advanced
  This is a special message for our SearchCap newsletter readers and anyone who visits Search Engine Land, regarding Search Engine Land’s first conference: Search Marketing Expo Advanced. It happens in Seattle this June 4th and 5th. In this post, I wanted to highlight some of the special sessions we’re doing…

Search News Headlines From Elsewhere

Applications & Portal Features

• "Live Drive" is almost here - Windows Live Folders beta, LiveSide
• Microsoft tees up LiveDrive hosted-storage service, All About Microsoft
• Gmail Traffic Up 17% Since Opening Up, Still Early Adopter Appeal, Hitwise
• Microsoft says GNU/Linux violates 235+ Windows patents, Boing Boing
• Microsoft’s Claims About Linux Patent Infringement Is Old News And Old FUD, Techdirt
• Orgoo - The Web Email/IM Replacement, TechCrunch

Business Issues

• Ad Industry Groups Support Call for ComScore and Nielsen//NetRatings Audits, ClickZ
• April Search Market Share: Yahoo! Gains, Outpaces Google, Compete
• Google allotted 20 acres of land near Hyderabad, The Hindu
• MSN, Yahoo! partnership envisioned, Seattle Times
• Yahoo’s Farzad Exercises Stock Options, AP

Conferences

• Review SMN’s Feed-Based Marketing Webinar, Search Engine Lowdown

Link Building

• Google’s Google Bomb Algorithm Is Not a Live Algorithm, Search Engine Roundtable
• Starting a New Link Campaign, Search Engine Watch

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google Earth launches in Arabic, Gulfnews
• Ask Mobile GPS: The Next Level of Local, Ask.com Blog
• Microsoft unveils hardware for Web phone push, Reuters
• Stephen Hawking in Photosynth and a house fire in Birds Eye, Windows Live Local
• The Art and Science of Local Search Databases, ClickZ
• Online Classifieds Enter a Social Phase, ClickZ
• How To Sell Yourself on the Facebook Marketplace, Pronet Advertising
• Redfin On 60 Minutes Tonight - Real Estate Market Disruption, TechCrunch
• Programmer Writes World’s Biggest Hello World, Google Earth Blog

Paid Search & Contextual

• Trial scheduled in Google "Adwords" case, East Bay Business Times
• Baidu Sued For Trade Name Violation, Pacific Epoch
• Microsoft adCenter Conversion Tracking Turned Off Automatically, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Toolbar or Webmastercentral, DavidN Blog
• Shhhh! A Secret Google Search URL That Removes Adsense Ads, Labnol
• Google Without Ads: Yecchy, Traffick
• Google - I sometimes dispair, Phil Bradley
• Re-Upping Your Google Adwords Certification - Tips, Tricks, and Tools, Stuntdubl

Searching

• Google Layouts Timeline, Google Blogoscoped
• Google Search Results, Displayed in Columns, Google Operating System
• Google Gadgets in Your Search Results, Google Operating System
• Google Categories, Google Operating System
• More Google SERPs Testing, Online Marketing Blog
• Simply Google - All You Can Eat Google, On One Page, Read/Write Web
• Google: ‘We’re not sexist’, Chicago Tribune
• Why does Google remember information about searches?, Official Google Blog
• The Future of Search, Data Mining
• Segmenting Search Intent, SEOmoz
• Google’s Browser Address Error Redirector, Google Operating System
• Google Books: a page in history, or just a footnote?, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

SEM Industry

• Why I Quit Working for Clients, Tropical SEO
• American Idol and SEO Baiting, John Andrews
• Are Search Engine Rankings are Dead?, Online Marketing Blog

SEO & SEM

• Stay logged into your Google Account and get non-personalized search results, Mima Search Marketing
• Link Analysis, Web Spam, and the Cautious Surfer, SEO By The Sea
• Answers: How Should I Move my Existing Site to my New Domain without Losing Rank?, WebProNews
• Social Bookmarking Meets Big Brother: Cluztr, Techcrunch
• Wildcard Subdomains, Wolf Howl
• Top 5 Search Engine Spammers, Viper Chill
• MSNBC: Google Has 100 Algorithms, Threadwatch
• Matt Cutts of Google Comments on "-950 Penalty" as "Over Optimization Penalty", Search Engine Roundtable
• A Drop in Traffic After Relaunching a SEO Friendly Version of a Site, Search Engine Roundtable
• Dissecting Google’s Supplemental Index, ClickZ
• ‘60 Minutes’ brings Google traffic, Robert Scoble
• Capitalizing on the Last Minute Holiday Shoppers, Search Engine Watch
• Study Concludes Robots.txt Files Should be Replaced, SEO By The Sea
• Search Engine Friendly is NOT Search Engine Optimized, Search Engine Guide

Social Media

• Australian Clarity, Twitter Blog
• Why Does Wikipedia Suck When It Comes to Science?, Wired
• Dancing with Jimmy Wales in ‘Second Life’, News.com
• Tagging Scheme For Organizing Feeds In Google Reader, Rimm Kaufman
• MyBlogLog to Rebrand and Make Significant Changes, David Dalka
• Beginners Guide to Getting Traffic from Smaller Social Media Voting Sites, SEOptimise
• Tomi Poutanen talks about algorithmic and social search, Eric Enge
• 50 Matches Searches Digg and Del.icio.us for You, Mashable
• Blogosphere mapped, Joho The Blog
• Digg and Reddit: Why I Read the Comments First (& You Should Too), Mashable
• Digg is Censoring Content by Burying Stories Internally, Pronet Advertising
• Top Social Networks: Facebook grows while MySpace slows, Compete

Video & Image Search

• Yahoo! Japan Image Search Has Flash Preview Player, Search Engine Roundtable
• CrunchGear’s Essential Guide to Piracy, TechCrunch
• The YouTube Police, Business Week
• Bluegrass musicians sue YouTube, Google Watch
• A (Former) YouTube Star’s Rant: We’ll Go It Alone, Thanks, John Battelle
• Department of Defense Blocks YouTube & MySpace, Search Engine Journal
• Optimizing Your Video Pages in 10 Easy Steps, Search Marketing Standard
• New, searchable index of more than 5,000 vintage LA news photos, Boing Boing

Other Items

• Google Plans to Secretly Track Your Online Gaming, SPOnG.com
• Yahoo puts marketing muscle into climate campaign, Reuters
• Ask.com’s Bold Mothers Day Logo, Google.com & Yahoo Go Simple & As The Search Engine Roundtable, Search Engine Roundtable
• From The Archives: Eric Schmidt at Burning Man, Valleywag
• Lazy Valleywag: Sergey Brin’s symbol, Valleywag
• Ex-Google engineer donates $1 million for Tahoe transportation, Las Vegas Sun
• Podcast: Colbert No Longer The Greatest, Says Google; Google Pushes Again On Paid Links; Search Marriages & More!, Daily SearchCast