SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 15, 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:

• Ask.com: The $100 Million Brand
  IAC to spend $100 mln on Ask brand in 2007: Diller from the Washington Post reports that Ask.com is going spend $100 million on branding Ask.com this year. IAC chairman Barry Diller, whose company owns Ask.com, said We have a number of ways to tell people about Ask, its tools,…
• Forty-Eight Hours With Ask Mobile
  On Friday I received a briefing on Ask Mobile (with GPS) and a demo phone with the application pre-installed. I now have three mobile devices that I’m carrying: a traditional cellphone, a Windows Mobile device and the Ask Mobile demo phone. It’s quite a challenge to physically manage all these…
• AOL Buys Third Screen Media Ad Network
  Seemingly in parallel with the land grab going on online, mobile M&A is heating up. Earlier this month, Microsoft acquired EU ad firm ScreenTonic and prior to that voice services and directory provider Tellme. Today, mobile ad network Third Screen Media went to AOL and will become a subsidiary of…
• Yahoo Fills CFO Position With Blake Jorgensen
  Yahoo has appointed Blake Jorgensen as its new chief financial officer. Jorgensen was the co-founder of Thomas Weisel Partners, a company he helped start in 1998. He takes over from Susan Decker, who has been jointly serving as CFO and as head of the new Advertiser & Publisher Group, formed…
• Blinkx And ChaCha Strike Video Search Deal
  ChaCha, which combines traditional algorithmic search with human-assisted search, has announced a video distribution deal with Blinkx. ChaCha’s new video search will be entirely powered by Blinkx and potentially incorporated into ChaCha’s live search sessions. ChaCha uses chat functionality to enable a staff of paid, expert guides to interact with…
• Yahoo Expands Unlimited Email Offer Globally
  Today, Yahoo has begun rolling out unlimited email capacity worldwide. On March 28th, we reported they were offering unlimited email storage in the US. Now this is going worldwide. Not everyone will have unlimited capacity today but over the next coming months, they will, a Yahoo spokesperson told me….
• Pipl – A People Search Engine
  Pipl is a people search engine that tries to be a little different. Rather than just go off and hunt for email addresses, this tries to search through the deep/invisible/hidden web to return content that other search engines are going to miss. The interface is simple – type in first…
• Your Paid Search Performance Is Relative
  Behold the noble savage. This mythical creature, an invention of 18th-century romantic philosophers, coexisted peacefully with his environment, uncorrupted by civilization. My advice to you as a paid search advertiser this week is: be as "corrupted" as possible, if corrupted means recognizing that peaceful coexistence is nearly impossible. You’ll…

Search News Headlines From Elsewhere

Business Issues

• More New Domains or Name Server Updates at Microsoft, ResourceShelf
• IAC Buys Front Line Stake, Expanding Stage Presence, WSJ.com
• Students find Google a haven, source of frustration, The Stanford Daily Online
• Google to Present at Upcoming Investor Events, Google Press Release

Conferences

• Conference Notes: Google and Yahoo Officials to Keynote the Second Workshop on The Future of Web Search, ResourceShelf

Link Building

• Making Link Bait and Viral Marketing Work – Part Six, Search Engine Guide

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Yahoo Expands oneSearch Mobile Search into Asian Markets, Search Engine Journal
• FlickrVision – And Now for Google Earth, Google Earth Blog
• Rental Site HotPads Gains Funding, Features, Screenwerk

Paid Search & Contextual

• Scheduled Maintenance, Saturday, May 19, 2007, adCenter Blog
• adCenter Feature Review: Bulk Keyword Edits and Ad Preview, adCenter Blog
• Handing Over the Keys to Your Google AdWords Account, Search Engine Roundtable
• PPC Arbitrage: If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Them!, Stefan Juhl
• Top 4 Lies Domainers Tell Themselves, Tropical SEO
• Webmasters Frustrated Over Forced Upgrade of AdSense Accounts to Google Accounts, Search Engine Roundtable
• Being There for Your Customers, Yahoo Search Marketing Blog
• Ad Exchanges Take On Yahoo, Google, RED HERRING
• Indeed launches PPA: pay-per-action, pay-per-applicant (beta), Indeed Blog

Podcasts

• Introducing the Google Developer Podcast, Google Code Blog
• The Marketing Pilgrim Podcast – Episode 6, Marketing Pilgrim
• Ask.com’s $100 Million Branding Campaign; Class Action Suit Over Yahoo’s Earnings & More!, Daily SearchCast

Searching

• Search Result Snippets and the Perception of Search Quality, SEO By The Sea
• Five Things You Didn’t Know About Accoona, Online Marketing Blog
• Who are the Google killers?, Rediff
• Farecast Emerges From Beta, Mashable
• The visual thesaurus, Phil Bradley
• Plan Your Public Transit Route with HopStop, TechCrunch
• New Layout for Google Local Search Onebox Results, Natural Search Blog
• Autobytel Selects Kosmix as Vertical Search Partner, Search Engine Watch
• MSN ranks Wikipedia over Digg for search term ‘digg’, Threadwatch

SEM Industry

• SEMPO Scandinavia WG – First launch event in Stockholm, Multilingual Search

• Internet Search Engine Database launches ISEdb SCOOP, Search Engine Watch Blog
• Most Australian SEO Firms Are Spammers?, Marketing Pilgrim
• SEM Scholarship Finalists Announced, Marketing Pilgrim

SEO & SEM

• Six Elements for Effective Landing Pages, Marketing Pilgrim
• Additional Googlers soon to be contributing to this community, Google Webmaster Help Group
• Protect Your Site’s Content, Pronet Advertising
• Emphasizing Your Assets As A Small Service, Search Engine Watch
• Amazon.com: The SEO-Smartest Retailer on the Web?, Small Busines SEM
• Don’t Risk Your Rankings With Unethical SEO, Search Engine Guide

Social Media

• LOOK OUT Kevin Rose! 19 IM Startups You Need to Beat, Mashable
• Digg is Sending Lowest Referral Traffic in 1.5 Years, SEOmoz
• Digg is Censoring Content by Burying Stories Internally, Pronet Advertising
• Are Social Powered Search Engines The Future Of Search?, Search Engine Journal
• Twitter Cloning: Tiny Blogs Bloom Everywhere, Wired
• On Microformats, Twitter Blog
• Meebo Launches Meebo Rooms (oh, and Meebo now has ads), Techcrunch
• Things Sure Are Quiet At MySpace News, TechCrunch
• So Far: MySpace News MIA, Screenwerk
• 16 Awesome Data Visualization Tools, Mashable
• Working the Media, Yahoo Publisher Network
• Kids Toy Crazes Go Virtual, Compete Blog
• Google’s Mayer: Facebook Is the Future of Journalism, Google Watch

Video & Image Search

• Viacom sees more strength in Web advertising, Reuters
• YouTube’s Got a Gaming Problem, Wired News
• ChaCha and blinkx Announce Partnership, Read/Write Web
• MySpace Launching Branded Video Channels, Marketing Pilgrim
• TiVo makes TV more searchable, News.com

Other Items

• Google Launches Audio Ads to the Masses: Step by Step Screen Captures, Search Engine Roundtable
• Talk at Google bumpy for candidate, San Jose Mercury News
• SF Wi-Fi plan with Google and Earthlink shelved until July, The Register
• Gonzales proposes new crime: "Attempted" copyright infringement, News.com
• Famous Google Hack Jobs, IT Security
• Yahoo lives and breathes purple, News.com