SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 24, 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 Engine Land: Now With More Lands!
  Search Engine Land has gained new individual "Lands" today, guides to particular aspects of search and search marketing. You can reach these via the new "Land" buttons or tabs now at the top of each page in the site. In addition, you can now subscribe to any of our…
• How To Protect Your Domain Name
  True story: A small business owner, who was not a client, called me one day with a problem. Let’s call him "Dave." His web site was missing. Not missing from the search engines, missing completely. Gone. No longer reachable at his domain. It was nothing I could help with…
• The Search-Friendly Appeal Of User-Generated Content
  Content comes in all types, lengths, and mediums. From an SEO point of view, we simply know that it’s important—no, crucial—to add content on a regular basis to our web sites. The content we add must be of value to our potential buyers. But truthfully, "writing content" is the most…
• Google Launches ‘Cross-Language Information Retrieval (CLIR)’
  As promised at its "Searchology" event last week, Google has launched cross-language information retrieval (CLIR). It’s now been added as a new feature to Google Translate and went live yesterday. As Chris Sherman previously wrote, Google is playing a bit of catch-up with this initiative; Yahoo has been doing this…
• Google Maps Gains "Avoid Highways" Feature
  Google has introduced a new "avoid highways" checkbox on Google Maps that provides alternative routing for those looking to, er, avoid highways. In 1982 Native-American author William Least Heat-Moon wrote a memoir called "Blue Highways" about a cross-country trip in which he traveled on minor roads, literally the blue (as…
• Goog411 Raising Profile, Seeking Feedback
  The Google Lat Long Blog promotes Google’s free voice-based local search (free directory assistance) product: Goog411. The post also cites a new, related Google Group, similar to the Yahoo Suggestions Board, and a related, suggestions email address. Here’s our original post on Goog411 from launch earlier this year. Google was…
• Google Hot Trends, Yahoo Buzz Index: Tracking Tools For Traditional Marketing
  Search Engine Journal compares Google’s recently introduced "Hot Trends" database with the Yahoo Buzz Index. (Barry Schwartz wrote extensively about Hot Trends previously.) These tools, while fun and interesting, are also potentially important as business intelligence and data mining tools and increasingly useful to track the efficacy of offline marketing….
• Inform To Power Site Search, Content Aggregation For Major Publishers
  According to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), "Inform Technologies LLC, which is based in New York, said 16 online publications plan to include its new search function. Among them are WashingtonPost.Newsweek Interactive’s Newsweek.com and Conde Nast’s Portfolio.com."…
• A Product Plan For ‘Google Health’?
  From time to time in the past, Google’s Adam Bosworth has posted on health-related questions. Many people have speculated that health would be a vertical to get special attention from Google. And there have thus been "Google Health" rumors for a long time. Yesterday Bosworth posted again and linked to…
• Microsoft: We Don’t Need Yahoo (Now), aQuantive Deal ‘More Of A Merger’
  The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) ran an article quoting Microsoft’s Yusuf Mehdi, who made the following statements at a Goldman Sachs Internet conference: "Yahoo has a great business. Kudos to them, but we’re bigger globally. We have half a billion people . . . I still don’t think it’s…
• IAB: Search Continues To Lead Online Ad Spending
  The IAB released its full-year 2006 Internet Advertising Revenue Report (here, PDF file) today. U.S. Internet ad spending was worth a total of $16.9 billion, with search accounting for 40 percent or around $6.8 billion, "up 31 percent from the $5.1 billion reported in 2005." The category distribution of online…

Search News Headlines From Elsewhere

Applications & Portal Features

• Compete API Open For Business, Compete Blog

Conferences

• Distribution’s Brand Effect Neglected at Media Event, ClickZ
• SEO Meetups, Now (Hopefully) Coming to a City Near You!, SEOmoz
• Come to Vermont for an Online Marketing Boot Camp, Google Analytics Blog
• Why we attend conferences, Google Webmaster Central Blog
• Five Questions For Danny Sullivan, MediaPost

Business Issues

• Gates and Jobs to meet and, like, talk about stuff next Wednesday, Boing Boing
• Trulia Adds Sequoia Cash, GigaOM
• DOG (Distrust/Disdain of Google) moves in, Robert Scoble
• Liberating Yourself From The Google Monopoly – The Times, They Are A Changin’, Performancing
• Ask Isn’t Sweating The Competition, Forbes

• Biting The Google That Tries To Feed You, Epicenter

Local, Maps & Mobile

• PhotoFlyr – A Google Earth 3D Flying Photo Viewer, Google Earth Blog
• Google patent app shows extensive Google plans for mobile search, IP Telephony
• Angelina Jolie’s Tatoo in Google Earth, Google Earth Blog

Paid Search & Contextual

• Google Announced Purge Of Ad-Heavy Web Sites, New York Post

Podcasts

• Reader Poll: Best SEO Podcasts, Online Marketing Blog
• Rush Hour Episode 14, Pronet Advertising

Searching

• Ghent University joins Google Book Search, Inside Google Book Search
• How Alt Search Engines Implemented Universal Search…Well Before Google Did, Read/Write Web
• Google Searchology Event Video, Google Blogoscoped
• Personalization the most important part of Google’s expansion, Geeking With Greg
• Followup on Google’s Historical Data Patent Application, SEO By The Sea
• Google Stops "Did You Mean: He Invented", Google Blogoscoped

SEO & SEM

• How To Capitalize on Google Universal Search, Search Engine Roundtable
• Yahoo! Gets Caught With Their Hand in the Cloaking Jar, SEOmoz
• Want To See Which Sources Are Ranked Highest In Google News?, V7N
• Tracking Google News : Most Popular Stories and Sources, Search Engine Journal
• Newspapers 2.0: What metadata can tell you about a newspaper, Martin Belam

Social Media

• Technorati: All Your Blogs Are Belong to ShoeMoney?, 10e20
• A Rebuttal to Neil Patel’s Social Media Landing Page Article, Search Engine Guide

Video & Image Search

• Google Image Search Q&A, Google Blogoscoped
• New Jersey sues YouTube. Seriously, Google Watch
• Make-It-Yourself ‘Star Wars’, Wall Street Journal

Other Items

• Let Paul and Mark have Basketball…., John Battelle
• Google Forbids Children To Use It?, Google Blogoscoped
• Tony Blair War Criminal and Gordon Brown Gay?, Hitwise