SearchCap: The Day In Search, September 21, 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 Unity Project To Build Submarine Cables Across Pacific Ocean
  Remember that Submarine Cable Negotiator job we mentioned being available at Google last month? Turn out Google’s not just negotiating for undersea cable use. It has its own "Unity" project underway to run communication cable of its own under the Pacific. Spotted via John Paczkowski, Google plans new undersea "Unity"…
• Search in Pictures: Search Cars, Ask Cricket, & Yarrrr!
  In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have and more….
• Comparing Mobile Ads In Google & Yahoo
  Google recently opted-in many of their clients’ PPC ads to appear in Google Mobile search results. Yahoo has been offering a small suite of mobile ads for a while now, too, so I thought it’d be interesting to compare their current mobile ad offerings. This article is part of…
• Nielsen NetRatings: August 2007 Search Share Puts Google On Top, Microsoft Holding Gains
  Continuing on with this month’s search popularity stats review, I’m turning now to those from Nielsen NetRatings, after having looked at Hitwise stats yesterday. Like yesterday’s stats, those from NetRatings are from August 2007. They show Google on top, Yahoo fairly steady and Microsoft largely holding on to gains made…
• Your Guide To Countries That Have Banned YouTube
  With Thailand and Turkey both yet again seeking to block YouTube, we thought it would be useful to recap the growing list of countries that have objected to content on the service. We’re focusing on national governments that have taken action to block content on YouTube from being accessible…
• As US Economy Weakens, Ad Spend Steady Online But Drops In Traditional Media
  MediaPost has two stories today that start to answer a larger question about how the Internet will fare in a weakening economy. For some time people have been speculating that if the economy hits a meaningful downturn or heads into recession, what will happen to the Internet ad spend? The…
• Report: Google Planning Wireless Spectrum Moves In UK
  Much has been written about Google’s efforts to bid on and open the wireless spectrum in the U.S. Now, according to the Guardian newspaper (as spotted via MarketWatch), Google is considering something very similar in the UK, as regulators propose that existing mobile operators (Vodafone and Telefonica) relinquish part of…
• Search And Online As Influential As TV On Moviegoers
  In another piece of research that validates the influence of the Internet on offline consumer behavior, MediaPost writes about a Google-Nielsen study of the behavior of 2,000 summer film goers in the U.S. and the Internet’s impact on their decision-making. According to the survey, exposure to promotion on TV remained…
• How Do You Spell Google? Man Files Suit Saying It’s His Social Security Number, Upside Down
  Google sued for ‘crimes against humanity’ from the Register reports a man named Dylan Stephen Jayne sued Google for $5 billion. The crime? That his social security number, when turned upside down, spells the name Google….
• Google’s New Media Advertising: Get Hip or Get Left Behind
  Like many agencies and advertisers, we’ve been dragging our feet before trying Google’s relatively new advertising options. My rationale has been that search (or PPC) advertising is inherently better than the traditional advertising media: print, radio and TV. PPC advertising has been trouncing traditional media due largely to the fact…
• First Click Free: Accessing Subscription-Based Articles For Free Via Google News
  The Google News Blog wrote about the First click free program that allows publishers to let readers pass registration and subscription barriers, if they come from Google News. I am sure you have seen this in action. You see an article, you click on it from Google News and you…
• Gates, Brin & Page: Top 5 Richest People In Forbes 400
  Forbes released its latest The Forbes 400 list, and among the top ten richest Americans are Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Gates topped the list at number one with a net worth of $59.0 billion. Sergey Brin is listed at number five, with a net…
• URL Rewriting & Custom Error Pages In ASP.NET 2.0
  Recently I’ve been working on several ASP.NET 2.0 sites and had to research the best ways to set up URL rewriting, permanent redirects, and custom error pages. ASP.NET 2.0 is a popular platform for building corporate websites.  Among my clients, this solution seems to be very popular with medium to…
• Eye Tracking on Universal and Personalized Search
  In the past two columns, I’ve featured the interviews (Part 1, Part II) of where search might go in the next three years. The two themes consistently mentioned as the most important for the future have been personalization and blended search results. Being a user-centric type of person, my…

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Zimbra: Why Did Yahoo Buy Them?, Read/Write Web

Business Issues

• Google’s ‘Container’ Patents Hint At Future Drive Into Enterprise — Google Patents, InformationWeek
• Rumor: Google Buying Sirius?, ClickZ
• E-Commerce 2.0: Interview with Salim Ismail, Head of Yahoo! Brickhouse, Read/Write Web
• Growing Google searches for balance, FT.com

Conferences

• October 1st is the Day to Learn About Search, SEOmoz
• Attend SMX Local & Mobile With a Free Pass!, Marketing Pilgrim

Link Building

• Backlink & Anchor Text SEO Tool Updated – Ninja Style, Jim Boykin
• Google Link Report Tool Now Working Again, Search Engine Roundtable
• Tools for Getting Free Backlinks and Traffic from Squidoo, Hubpages and Tons of Blogs, Fantomaster
• Whiteboard Friday – Link Wars, SEOmoz

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Ask Mobile Set For UK Launch By Christmas, AccuraCast
• Think Local, Act Social, Search Engine Watch
• 3D Red Bull Flights in Google Earth, Google Earth Blog

Paid Search & Contextual

• Advertisers Frustrated Over Importing Campaigns into Yahoo Search Marketing, Search Engine Roundtable
• The World According to Google, ClickZ
• Three for the Price of One: Pricing, Special Offers and Unique Selling Points, adCenter Blog
• Email Phishing Hits Yahoo! Search Marketing, Marketing Pilgrim
• Google AdWords Accreditation: How to Revise the Test, Site Visibility

Podcasts

• Search Pulse 35: Google Tools, Spider Craze, Jailed Google Bomber, PageRank Chatter, Search Engine Roundtable
• SEO 101 : Blogs, SEO and Link Building, Search Engine Journal
• Most Popular Search Engines; US Senate Looks At GoogleClick & More, Daily SearchCast

Searching

• The day I broke up with Bloglines, BruceClay.com
• Google Expands China Offerings With Video, Transit, Accounts, Google Blogoscoped
• Symantec CEO says Internet tracking programs are digital peeping, AP
• Google on Multi-Tiered Indexing and Multi-Staged Query Processing, SEO By The Sea
• Search Engines for Kids, Search Engine Guide

SEM Industry

• Todd Malicoat on SEM Training, Linking and Industry Image, Search Marketing Standard

SEO & SEM

• Google malware watchdogs ban mom-and-pop shops, The Register
• Bizarre Factors Search Engines Might Use to Rank the Results, SEOmoz
• Google: Search Key to Auto-Buying Cycle, Search Engine Watch Blog

Social Media

• Stumbleupon mathematics for stumblers, The Venture Skills Blog

Other Items

• Inside AdWords: Create your own newspaper ads, Inside AdWords
• Happy 25th Birthday to the Smiley :-), Ask.com Blog

Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:

• Fool Proof Sphinn-Bait Tactics to Reach the Front Page
• An Ode to StumbleUpon
• Digg Launches Features that Netsape had in Spring 2007 (who is the clone?)
• Understanding Confrontational and Controversial Marketing
• Tactics for Improving Google Universal Search Results
• Could The Devaluation of the Dollar Hurt Your PPC Results?
• Why SEOmoz Needs A “For Entertainment Purposes Only” Disclaimer
• An Exhaustive List of Search Engine Based Keyword Research Data
• Christine Churchill’s: Time For A Site Redesign?
• Top 20 Sphinn Users
• Hide and Speak: Recovering from a Social Media Disaster
• Big List of UK Internet Marketing Blogs – Free Links
• How to Set Up a Domino Effect of Social Media Traffic
• How to convert a Google AdWords campaign to MSN AdCenter
• BUZZER! Lyndon Climbs Past Danny to #1 On All Time Top Sphinner List
• Digg Profile Redesign: See who your REAL friends are
• Link Building is Getting More Difficult, but Why?
• Forget Traditional SEO! Why Good Link Bait is Worth $50K
• How Many Yahoo Mash Pets Can You Zap?
• What Makes a Good Web Directory, and Why Google Penalized Dozens of Bad Ones