SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 12, 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:

• Google Releases Android SDK & Offers $10 Million Mobile Development Challenge
  Google has released the Android SDK at http://code.google.com/android/ and is offering $10 million in rewards to developers who can build out the best Android applications. You can learn about the SDK over here, plus there is a blog, FAQs, and discussion form. Here is a video showing you what Android…
• December’s Battle Of The Search Conferences
  It’s mid-November, when WebmasterWorld’s PubCon is traditionally held. But all’s quiet on the Las Vegas front. What’s up? This year, PubCon has moved to December, running head-to-head against Incisive Media’s SES event in Chicago. What’s a search marketer to do?…
• Google Won’t Hand Over Competitive Data If Hit With Subpoena
  Eric Goldman has updated us on the ongoing Connor Sport Court and Rhino Court case involving Google. The case, which we covered with Want Competitive Keyword Information? Just Subpoena Google! implied that Google was going to give over competitive keyword data simply because one company filed a subpoena for it….
• Firefox: Google’s Secret Weapon Against Microsoft?
  Will Success, or All That Money From Google, Spoil Firefox? from the New York Times asks if all the money Google is feeding Firefox going to hurt the browser and the community behind the browser in the future. But if you look at this article the other way, why is…
• Google To Acquire Sprint? Don’t Bet On It
  A TMCnet blog repeats a rumor that Google might buy US wireless carrier Sprint. This is based in part of Google’s aggressive push into mobile with Android, its willingness to bid on wireless spectrum licenses and its efforts to gain access to unused parts of the television spectrum, so-called “white…
• San Francisco Oil Spill Maps & Wishing For Better Community Map Search Tools
  Trying to figure out the impact of last week’s oil spill in San Francisco Bay, which happened after the container ship Cosco Busan hit the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge? There are maps to the rescue! Links to them below, along with some observations on the difficulty in finding community-built maps…
• Northeastern University Sues Google Over Index Database Design
  Northeastern sues Google over patent from The Boston Globe reports that Northeastern University and a company founded by a Northeastern professor, Kenneth P. Baclawski, is suing Google for patent infringement. The issue at hand in this case is that Northeastern has patented a method of storing database queries back in…
• Diller On Ask’s Growth, Facebook & Buying AOL
  Barry Diller to Time Warner: Name Your Price for AOL from AdAge has a Q&A session with Barry Diller, the CEO of IAC, the parent company of Ask.com. In this question and answer session, Diller was asked about the split up of IAC into five business units, he was asked…
• AOL Buys Q&A Provider Yedda
  AOL announced that it has acquired Israeli Q&A provider Yedda for an undisclosed sum. Comparable in many respects to Yahoo Answers, Yedda bills itself as a next generation “semantic” Q&A service. AOL will more broadly integrate the functionality into a number of its sites and properties, as Yahoo has with…
• Google Getting Ready To Partner With Clearwire On Wireless Spectrum Licenses?
  Last week Forbes wrote that Google will “definitely” participate, according to CEO Eric Schmidt, in the upcoming 700MHZ wireless spectrum auction. Also last week, Google partner Sprint said that it was ending its relationship with wireless broadband provider Clearwire to build a nationwide WiMax network. (Sprint is a member of…
• When Is Election Day?
  Election Day in the United States was last week, right? In fact, that was the “other” Election Day—when periodically, we as citizens gather to exercise our right to vote for governors, mayors, city councils, propositions, initiatives, referendums, etc. While we perused the positioning statements of local candidates, and cast…

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Live.com Releases Very Simple Page Translation Tool, Read/Write Web
• Windows Live Custom Domains renamed to Admin Center – New features added, LiveSide
• Google Gadget API To Depreciate Inline Gadgets, SEOish
• That’s Your AIM in My GTalk, TechCrunch
• Translation Widgets for Your Site, Google Operating System
• Google blocks Yahoo’s Pipes, BigMouthMedia
• Google Reader to Update Feeds Faster?, Google Operating System
• Mobile Google Notebook, Google Operating System

Business Issues

• Baidu wants in on Alibaba’s turf, Reuters
• Chinese Google-Related Domains, Google Blogoscoped
• Google Options Make Masseuse a Multimillionaire, New York Times

Conferences

• BlogWord 2007 Session Coverage Recap, BruceClay.com
• Podcast: Why search conferences are worth the time and money, SEO 101
• Going to SES Chicago for the first time, Search Engine Watch Blog
• Yahoo Answers Meetup in Washington, D.C., on November 30, Yahoo! Answers Team Blog

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google LatLong: Vancouver Transit Routing Added, Google LatLong
• Facebook Ads and Local Business, Screenwerk
• Gmail Mobile App and Google Apps Accounts, Google Operating System
• T-Mobile Wagers Deal With Google Is Worth the Risk, Wall Street Journal

Link Building

• 12 Link Building Tactics For 2008, Performancing.com
• Linkbait is the New Reciprocal Links Page : SEO Book.com, SEO Book
• Google Toolbar PageRank Fluctuations (Round 4), andybeard.eu
• 17 Creative Link Building Ideas : Please Add Your Own, Search Engine Journal

Paid Search & Contextual

• NYDailyNews Latest to Join Yahoo Newspaper Partnership, ClickZ
• Working at Microsoft – An adCenter Story from Europe, Online Marketing Blog
• New Facebook, MySpace Ad Programs Prompt FTC Complaint, MediaPost
• Inside AdWords: Min CPC, Max CPC and Avg CPC clarified, Inside AdWords
• adCenter Blog: Search Marketing Research For UK Small Businesses, adCenter Blog
• Google AdWords Testing "Products from this Advertiser" in Search Ads?, Search Engine Roundtable
• ABCSearch Inks Global Deal with Yahoo!, Company Press Release
• SearchEngineWatch: Content Advertising Explained – Part 2, Search Engine Watch
• Yahoo on Search Advertising and Behavioral Targeting, SEO By The Sea

Searching

• Current and Future Search Trends: What the Top Internet Search Engines Are Doing – Search Engine Guide Blog, Search Engine Guide
• Biases and Restrictions for Google Search, Google Operating System
• Shopping.com Closes To Merchants, ComparisonEngines
• Microsoft’s Ramez Naam Interviewed about Live Search Updates, Stone Temple
• Shopping for electronics just got a whole lot easier, Live Search

SEM Industry

• New Online Library for Search Engine Marketing Industry, Cre8PC
• The Future of Search: Strategy, Execution, Evolution, Search Engine Watch
• The US Search Engine Optimization Market, Google Blogoscoped
• Women of Internet Marketing Wednesdays – Part 26, Search Marketing Gurus

SEO & SEM

• Ethical Search Engine Marketing and Web Site Usability, Cre8PC
• 3 SEO plugins: More traffic with custom titles and individual descriptions, Performancing.com
• Flash is Required: How to SEO Flash?, Search Engine Roundtable
• What Signals Do You Actively Follow?, SEOmoz
• Sources of Site Traffic – Best To Worst, DazzlinDonna
• Google Payload Launch – Traffic Arbitrage at its Best, Fantomaster
• How Do You Role Your SEO?, SEOmoz
• SEO for Firefox : Rundown of This Incredible SEO Tool, Search Engine Journal

Social Media

• Sears Taps Yahoo For Holiday Campaign, WebProNews
• Is Your URL Digg Compatible?, Pronet Advertising
• A del.icio.us linkstructure!, www.joostdevalk.nl
• Facebook search expands – will it take on Google?, VentureBeat
• PayPerPost’s Latest Gimmick – SocialSpark, TechCrunch
• How To Disable StumbleUpon on Google’s Search Results, Search Engine Roundtable
• comScore: Facebook Traffic Flattening; MySpace Hits Record, mashable.com

Video, Music & Image Search

• Google Image Search Offers Suggestions, Googlified
• Windows Live wants to build Flickr competitor, I Started Something
• Photobucket Improves Search with Photo Tagging, eWeek
• MySpace first friend Tom leads music efforts, Reuters
• Class Act: YouTube Moves Into Education, AdWeek
• ActiveSymbols Launches Facial Recognition Platform, Read/Write Web
• One in 10 will pay to remove YouTube ads, E-Consultancy

Other Items

• Google Magazine – About Whatever You Want (Soon at a Kiosk Near You?) -SEO by the SEA, SEO By The Sea
• Are Google, Apple Draining Brains From Space Tech? | Wired Science from Wired.com, Wired
• Veterans Day Logo from Google , Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Israel Head Rejects Censor Role, The Associated Press
• Yahoo! Launches New Program to Advance Open-Source Software for Internet Computing, Yahoo Press Releases

Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:

• Yelp SEO Analysis: Part One
• Explaining what the “Social Graph” is to your Executives
• Site Links and Search Volume
• The First (un)Official Sphinn Awards – Day 1
• Nofollow removed from links in Sphinn comments?
• The Truth Behind Why Google Checks Bounce
• 21 Really Funny Search Queries
• Linkbait is the New Reciprocal Links Page
• 10 Ways to Make your Website More Popular
• AdWords Content Exclusion (beta) – A Walk Through With Screenshots!
• Verizon Redirecting Typo Traffic – Are They Breaking Net Neutrality
• The Blogger’s Guide to Team Marketing: Working Together for Traffic and Exposure
• YAY! Upload MULTIPLE YouTube Videos At the Same Time
• Natural Language Search on Steroids: TrueKnowledge
• Have I Been Sending Stumble Thunder Your Way?
• Studying Spider Crawl Rate to Find Your Most Trusted Pages
• 12 Link Building Tactics For 2008
• Firefox Extension to Help You Read Content on the Web
• Facebook’s Hot, At Least As A Top Search Term
• Google Toolbar PageRank Fluctuations (Round 4)
• Families of Chinese Dissidents BLAST Yahoo
• The Complete No-Nonsense Step-by-step Guide to Designing Web Sites
• How to Get Your Blog Listed In USA Today For Free
• Interview With Hamlet Batista
• Live.com link commands are back
• 7 Points of Paid Links v.s. Editorial Links
• Hare Krishnas Reveal Secret to Massive Link-love and Mega-sales!
• Facebook Becoming More Like MySpace, Google … Awwh Heck & Everyone Else?
• Why Google Can’t Just Dump PageRank
• SEOmoz’s Professional Services Marketplace
• Interview: StumbleUpon Algorithm Cracker Tim Nash