SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 3, 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:

• Will Utah’s New
  Trademark Bill Stop Competitive Keyword Buys?
  Wow. Via Techdirt, news from the EFF that the Utah legislature has passed a
  Trademark Protection Act law preventing people from buying ads linked to terms
  that are also trademarks of others. The Trademark Blog notes the law probably
  violates the US Constitution. Certainly it will be hard to enforce….
• Preliminary
  Scorecard: How Effective Is Yahoo’s Panama Upgrade?
  The world of search marketing is divided into two types of people, it seems:
  Those who have never actually used Yahoo’s new Panama sponsored search upgrade
  and never will; and those who are in knee deep working on their accounts, and
  want to find out how other fellow marketers…
• Live Search
  Maps Adds New Features And Firefox 3D Support
  Microsoft added a range of new features to Live Search Maps, including Firefox
  support for Virtual Earth 3D. Some of the new capabilities are live right now
  and some are going live later today. Below is a list of the new tools and
  features and their descriptions from the distributed…
• Ranking The SEO
  Ranking Factors
  Back in 2005, SEOmoz tried to assemble a list of all the possible search
  engine ranking factors out there and get various experts to rate them. I say
  tried to because while they had a list, and ratings, no one knows all the
  factors or exactly how each individual search…
• Ask Ramps Up
  The Mystery Ads
  First in the UK, Ask rolled out a guerilla marketing campaign aimed at
  sparking an "information revolution" to choose Ask over Google. Now a
  different yet still mysterious campaign is underway in the US by Ask.
  Valleywag reports about billboards on Highway 101 between San Francisco and
  San Jose saying…
• Snakes On A
  Google
  We noted the great Google python rampage in headlines yesterday, but the story
  continues. Since it’s a slow news day, so why not. On April 1, the python pet
  of a Google employee in New York got loose. No joke. The python was found
  yesterday, and no one was harmed….
• MSN Gets The
  Message: Don’t Prefill The Search Box
  I’m still waiting for the promised official response from Microsoft about the
  entire prefilling of the search box thing that happened at MSN UK, as we wrote
  about last week. But via Threadwatch, MSN UK apparently has a blog about the
  — yes — MSN UK home page. There, MSN…
• The Four
  Returns Of Social Media Marketing
  There are essentially four different types of return that you can expect from
  a successful social media marketing campaign: links, mindshare/branding, sales
  and consumer interaction. Below, a look at each type of return and how you can
  tap into it, depending on your goals….
• The Impending
  Social Search Inflection Point
  Search has changed. Online consumer information retrieval has reached another
  inflexion point – a shift from pure algorithmic search to social search.
  Searchers have become increasingly sophisticated, and basic algorithmic web
  results are getting diluted out of most mainstream search experiences such as
  Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL and Ask. Search…
• Google TV Ads:
  Google Brings Auction Model To TV Advertising
  Rumored and written about for several weeks, Google is in fact launching a
  beta trial of TV ads with cable company Astound and satellite TV provider
  Echostar, which owns Dish Network. Astound operates in selected cities in
  Northern California. But Dish Network is national. Interestingly, Dish Network
  is highly interactive,…
• Search Month:
  March 2007 Search News, In Review
  Search Month is a monthly newsletter that recaps stories covered on Search
  Engine Land over the past month. It’s also available by feed here. Below, news
  about Search Engine Land itself, then our 10 most popular stories written last
  month, then a major story for various search marketing topics along…

Search News Headlines From Elsewhere

Applications & Portal Features

• 
  Introducing Google Apps referrals, Inside AdSense
• 
  Google Gadget ecosystem statistics for March, Niall Kennedy

Business Issues

• 
  FAST Acquires Convera’s Retrievalware Technology, Search Engine Watch Blog
• THE
  CHART: Downtime, Valleywag
• 
  PriceGrabber Lands AOL Shopping Deal, ComparisonEngines.com

Paid Search & Contextual

• When is MFA a Good Thing?,
  Threadwatch

SEO & SEM

• Cats and Mice: The
  Shifting Sea of Search Results, SEO Book
• 
  How SEO Can Save A Business, SEOmoz
• 
  Time and Money: Small Businesses Have Little of Each, Search Engine Watch
• 
  Does "Freshness" Mean More in Google?, Search Engine Roundtable
• 
  Should You Outsource Link Development in SEO?, Search Engine Roundtable
• 
  A Plea to Stop Treating SEO as an Afterthought, Search Engine Watch
• 
  Have you gone overboard with your keyword density?, Jennifer Slegg

Social Media

• The State of
  Technorati, April 2007, David Sifry
• 
  Technorati’s Mating Dance, TechCrunch
• 
  Mirror mirror on the wall, which blog search is best of them all?, Robert
  Scoble
• Picli is Digg For
  Photos…Yawn, Mashable
• Next
  Service To Try Gaming Digg: Subvert and Profit, TechCrunch
• 
  Time to Join StumbleUpon, Pronet Advertising

Video & Image Search

• 
  Book Search and library digital files — what’s the scoop?, Google
  Librarian Central Blog
• 
  fisssh!, a meta search engine, is launched, Search Engine Watch Blog

Other Stuff

• Taxes, SES and
  Starlets: April Smart Answers, Ask Blog
• Turkish
  Users Demand Special Google Logo, Google Blogoscoped
• Google
  Search History Art Project, Google Blogoscoped
• 
  This year’s Anita Borg Scholarship winners, Official Google Blog
• 
  Big And Little Screens Dominate This Week’s Google Weekly Zeitgeist,
  Google Zeitgeist
• Podcast: Google Starts
  TV Ads; Social For Next Gen Search? MSN Keeps Hands Off The Search Box;
  SnakePlex & More!, Daily SearchCast