Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

• SPONSOR MESSAGE: Increase Targeted Traffic & Link Popularity w / TLA
  Text Link Ads marketplace allows you to purchase static html ads that can drive targeted traffic while building link popularity which is a top factor in search engine rankings. TLA is offering new Advertisers $100 in free Text Link Ads. Stop by Text-Link-Ads.com for more information….
• Local Search Finally Living Up To Its Promise
  Nearly a decade ago, I believed in the power and promise of locally focused Web sites and applications. Back then, I was COO of About.com and in hindsight can say that I was a bit ahead of market adoption, to say the least! We ended up pretty successfully focusing…
• Google Maps Further Expands Coverage
  Google announced expanded Maps coverage of Latin American and Asian countries on its LatLong blog. Recently added countries include: Afghanistan, Aruba, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belize, Bermuda, Brunei Darussalam, Bhutan, Bolivia, Cambodia, Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Fiji, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Indonesia, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Kuwait,…
• Yahoo Buys BuzzTracker News Site
  Yahoo is buying news aggregator BuzzTracker (Kara Swisher reports for $5 million). Yahoo sees the acquisition improving and expanding its news coverage in a number of ways. BuzzTracker founder Alan Warms becomes GM of Yahoo News….
• Google Creates Rich Australian Elections Site
  As explained on the Google Blog, Google has created a Google Australia election website to track the candidates and results of the forthcoming Australian national election. The site involves use of Google Maps, iGoogle and YouTube. It’s something of a mix of public service and self-service (in the sense of…
• Google Calls For International Privacy Standards
  Google is calling for a discussion on international privacy standards to take place, both through a blog post on its site today and in a speech that was given to a Unesco conference today. From the post by Peter Fleischer, Google’s global privacy counsel:…
• Searcharazzi: Google Launching Presently Presentation App Next Week?
  PowerPoint haters unite! So, Techcrunch says that The Inquirer says that Google is thiiiiiiiis close to launching Presently, a web-based alternative to PowerPoint. With consulting firm CapGemini now pushing Google Apps hard, can we finally say goodbye to Microsoft’s Office Suite? Some speculate that the app will be unveiled…
• Google Is 10 Years Old? Finding The Real Google Birthday
  The AFP has clearly been waiting for September 15, so it could trot out today’s "Google is 10 years old" story. But the company itself doesn’t count tomorrow as its 10th birthday. In fact, knowing exactly when Google’s birthday is depends on your point of view. Some milestones to…
• U.S. EPA Selects Virtual Earth For Geospatial Maps
  The United States Environmental Protection Agency has selected Microsoft’s Virtual Earth Platform for its geospatial mapping applications. The combination of diverse capabilities and imagery appears to be what appealed to the agency….
• Organizing The World’s Push Content: The iGoogle Ecosystem
  Today, we welcome another guest author to Just Behave. This week, we’re pleased to welcome Sep Kamvar, the lead software engineer of personalization at Google. In the first of two parts, Sep looks at how the introduction of iGoogle and gadgets have created a new ecosystem of push content…
• New Feed Subscriber Stats & User Interface For Google Webmaster Central
  Google Webmaster Central has gone live with a new "subscriber stats" area showing statistics of how many people read your feeds through the iGoogle personalized home page and Google Reader, as well as a new look and user interface for GWC. Below, more about both, as well as issues for…

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Google denies ownership of users’ words, News.com

Business Issues

• LookSmart Names Bert Knorr VP, Technology, LookSmart SEC Filing
• It’s All In The [Search] Packaging, GigaOM
• Odeo (Formerly SonicMountain) Acquires FireAnt, TechCrunch
• Rumormonger: Adam Bosworth going to Facebook?, Valleywag
• Search engine markets around the world, Pandia
• The Economics of Content – As Yahoo Focuses More On Ad Services, The Portal Remains Central, paidContent.org
• We’ve officially acquired Postini, Official Google Blog
• Yahoo Files for Several Trademarks: From Yahoo Mash to Tac Tip, ResourceShelf

Conferences

• Google To Present At TechCrunch40, TechCrunch
• Reader Poll: Can SES, SMX and Pubcon Coexist?, Online Marketing Blog

Link Building

• Making Sense of Linking and Site Promotion, Online Marketing Blog

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Real World Trumps Online in Local Search, Search Engine Watch

Paid Search & Contextual

• The Internet Ad Spending Not-So-Recession, Paul Kedrosky
• adCenter Blog: Get a Boost from your Brand!, adCenter Blog
• Counting Clicks, Forbes
• Funniest Pay Per Click Keyword Mistake Revealed, Bill Hartzer
• New edition of the AdWords Retail Newsletter, Inside AdWords
• PPC Search and the View-Through Conversion, ClickZ
• Web ad blocking may not be (entirely) legal, News.com
• Yahoo’s Usama Fayyad on Datamining, More Effective Advertising on Yahoo, and Social Media, SEO By The Sea

Searching

• Useful Google feature: better date search, Matt Cutts
• Read me first: The internet can’t be censored and it’s wrong for governments to try, The Guardian
• Search Techniques: Search Major Web Sites As You Type, Lifehacker
• Top 10 Search Terms in 10 Categories, August 2007, ClickZ
• Using Search Results People Click Upon to Understand Events Tied to Queries -SEO by the SEA, SEO By The Sea

SEM Industry

• Whiteboard Friday – State of the Industry, SEOmoz

SEO & SEM

• A Beginner’s SEO Toolbox, Small Business SEM
• Baking SEO into a Full Fledged Interactive Work Plan, Search Engine Watch
• Suggestions for Google Sitemaps, Gray Wolf

Social Media

• Blogger Play: Watch the blogs go by, Blogger Blog
• Del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter video demos preview of upcoming version, ZDNet
• Faceforce kickstarts the social business app movement, Charlene Li
• Happy 4th Birthday Del.icio.us, mashable.com
• Make Your Millions with Facebook Applications, SEOmoz
• The Ugly Side of Digg, Pronet Advertising

Video, Music & Image Search

• First Prince, now Village People target YouTube, News.com
• Five Technical Issues Hampering Online Video Growth, Seeking Alpha
• Google says JewTube is not kosher, News.com

Other Items

• Marshall Kirkpatrick Joins Read/WriteWeb, Read/Write Web

Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:

• Top 5 Blogging Success Stories: Exclusive Quotes From John Chow, Yaro Starak And More
• 10 Steps to Building an Online Media Empire
• A Beginner’s SEO Toolbox
• Optimizing Press Releases for Search Engines and People
• Digg, Facebook and YouTube: Show Us the Money
• Why Sphinn Needs a Dumbass Button
• Social Media Marketing Strategy #2: The Mullet
• Google Grants Enforces Spending Cap Policy
• Writing for StumbleUpon: High Impact Content “Above the Scroll” in Four Easy Steps
• Jennifer Laycock: The Idiocy of Google’s Paid Link Crusade
• Blogcatalog – Does Onclick Pass PageRank?
• Did Matt Cutts by accident reveal a sure-fire procedure to identify supplemental results?
• Will The Google Bashers Please Shut Up?
• A Crucial SEO Element: Web Site Credibility

Related Topics: SearchCap

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About The Author: Danny Sullivan is editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land. He’s a widely cited authority on search engines and search marketing issues who has covered the space since 1996. Danny also oversees Search Engine Land’s SMX: Search Marketing Expo conference series. He maintains a personal blog called Daggle (and maintains his disclosures page there). He can be found on Facebook, Google + and microblogs on Twitter as @dannysullivan. See more articles by Danny Sullivan

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