SearchCap: The Day In Search, September 7, 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:

• Searcharazzi: The Big O. The Big E.
  This morning Omniture announced that it has agreed to buy Offermatica and sidekick division OTTO Digital for $65 million. Still waiting to hear from the ranks as to whether this was too much, too little, or just right. As if that’s not enough “O’s” for you, Optimost, another landing…
• Search in Pictures: Google Dodge Ball, Super Mario Cubicle & Spooglers
  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….
• Search In The Year 2010: Part Two
  Several weeks ago (seemingly years) Just Behave featured Part One of the summarized interviews with my personal dream team of search usability: Jakob Nielsen, the Web’s best-known usability guru Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP of user experience and interface design Michael Ferguson, one of the architects of Ask’s unique user…
• Netscape “Classic” To Return As Default View
  Netscape has announced that the social news site it transformed into just over a year ago will be dropped from the Netscape home page in favor of the more traditional news portal site it released last month. Netscape made it clear that the social news site will continue, though the…
• Tracking Hot Topics On Wikipedia
  Wikirage is yet another Wikipedia data mining tool. This one lets you see what topics are hot by quickly identifying the 100 most edited articles for the last hour, day, week, or month. If you like to track rising keywords and memes, this tool is a fine place to start….
• Screenshots: The New Delicious
  If everyone else is pushing out the quick previews of the new Delicious, hey, we’ll add to the screenshot fodder for now. These are from an invite-only preview now out. There’s no set launch date for the public beta, but Delicious founder Joshua Schachter emailed those in the invite with,…
• LookSmart CTO Resigns
  A couple of months after LookSmart CEO David Hills resigned, the company’s CTO, Michael Grubb, announced his resignation, effective September 7, 2007. Here’s the statement from the SEC 8-K filing:On August 31, 2007, Michael Grubb, Senior Vice President, Technology and Chief Technology Officer of LookSmart, Ltd. (the “Company”), notified the…
• Secret Requests For Search Records Through Patriot Act Ruled Unconstitutional
  A US district court judge has ruled that it is unconstitutional for the US government to send secret letters demanding search records from search engines. A provision of the Patriot Act has allowed for such letters to be sent to search engines, ISPs and others by the Federal Bureau Of…

Search News From Around The Web:

Business Issues

• Feds OK Fee for Priority Web Traffic, Washington Post
• Giving away all that money is going to take Google some time, San Jose Mercury News
• Microsoft appoints Davies as marketing chief, Mad
• Yahoo Sheds Another Executive, WebProNews

Conferences

• Mentally Check Out with the SES San Jose Comic Strip, SEOmoz

Local, Maps & Mobile

• ShopLocal Adds a Personal Touch, Search Engine Watch Blog
• Where in the World is…?, SEOmoz
• Yahoo! Maps introduces "Send to Car", Yahoo Local Blog

Link Building

• The Top 10 SEOmoz Linkbait Articles, BlogStorm
• Interview of Debra Mastaler, the Link Guru, SEO Book
• On Google Banning Directories, Search Engine Roundtable
• Dynamic Linking & Nofollow – Practical Examples, Diagrams, FAQs, SEO Fast Start

Paid Search & Contextual

• FeedBurner Ads Losing Charm Ever Since Google Acquired Them, Digital Inspiration
• The Domaining Revolution: Lessons From The Domain Roundtable, Search Engine Guide
• Writing Killer PPC Ads (Nearly Live, Part II), Traffick
• Google Considers Video for Search Listings, MediaPost

Searching

• Google to boost universal search effort, InfoWorld

SEM Industry

• Interview with Richard Hearne ("Red Cardinal"), JohnMu
• SES, London 2008, Mike Grehan
• Paid Search Guys: Learn How to Make a Nice Title Tag Please, Barry Schwartz
• Search Marketers: How Do You Find A Good One?, SEM Geek
• SEO Humor, Jeremy Zawodny

SEO & SEM

• "There Are No Secrets" and other SEO Myths, John Andrews
• The Ultimate SEO Effectiveness Formula, McAnerin Muse
• Tips for Optimizing Blogs and Feeds, Search Engine Guide
• Webmaster Central gets a new look, Official Google Webmaster Central Blog

Social Media

• How Mark Zuckerberg Turned Facebook Into the Web’s Hottest Platform, Wired
• 5 Free Brand Monitoring Solutions, ViperChill
• Yahoo Answers, The New Spamming Ground, Search Engine Roundtable

Video, Music & Image Search

• 5 Tips for Optimizing Images for Search Engines, Search Engine Guide
• Will Search Marketers Change Their Spots?, Search Engine Watch
• ‘The Long Tail Is Just Not That Long’, Ad Age

Web Analytics

• Google Analytics and Google Image search: revisited, Joost de Valk
• Omniture Acquires Offermatica, Omniture Press Release

Other Items

• Ex-official wants names from Yahoo names, The Sun Chronicle Online
• Self-Referential Google Docs Chessboard, Google Blogoscoped

Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News