SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 6, 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: Master
  Of Closing The Loop?
  I gave SEO Book’s Aaron Wall a big mention for his piece on trust earlier this
  week, but he’s got another post out now that deserves as much attention:
  Google as the Invisible Hand of the Online Economy. In it, he covers things
  such as how by being everywhere, Google…
• Google Exec On
  Board Of Company That Might Pollute Google Results
  Bottom Slurping for Google Juice from Kate Kaye ClickZ is a fairly
  jaw-dropping story of Associated Content, a site cofounded by Google vice
  president of advertising sales Tim Armstrong, that might very well be
  generating the type of AdSense-powered crud that pollutes Google and other
  search engines as I…
• AFP & Google
  Settle Over Google News Copyright Case
  The most significant copyright case against Google News, that filed by Agence
  France-Presse back in March 2005, has now ended. Google has signed a licensing
  agreement with AFP that settles the suit. News from the AFP here. The
  statement from both companies has the usual spin that this is about…
• A "New Deal"
  For Online News & Search Engines?
  Investment pundits have been scratching their heads this week over billionaire
  investor Sam Zell’s $8.2-billion purchase of Tribune Corp., publisher of the
  Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, and owner of other old-media
  properties. Newspapers have been bleeding cash and losing both money and
  eyeballs to online news, job and…
• Shareholders To
  Vote On Google Censorship In China
  Google Faces Pressure Over Censorship from WebProNews reports that Google’s
  shareholders will have the right to vote at the upcoming annual meeting on the
  issue of censorship in China and other "abusive regimes." Marketwatch and
  BetaNews both also have earlier coverage….
• Google China
  Releases Labs Product Very Similar To Sohu.com’s Sogou
  Google evades question about software similarities from InfoWorld reports that
  Google is under scrutiny on their release of a Pinyin Input Method Editor (IME).
  The IME is a Google China labs product that enables "users to enter Chinese
  characters by typing their Pinyin equivalents on a standard QWERTY keyboard."
  The…
• No Win Against
  Google For Party That Opted-Out Of Click Fraud Settlement
  Google AdWords Contract Upheld (Again)–Feldman v. Google from Eric Goldman
  reports that Google has won a case against the one of the 556 plaintiffs that
  opted out of the Google click fraud settlement." Here are some key points I
  want to pull out from this:…
• Teaching Google
  To See Images
  "Image search" is really something of a misnomer, because current generation
  search engines rely primarily on text to "understand" all types of content,
  including images. When you search for images on Google, Flickr or most other
  search engines, they aren’t examining the pixels that make up images. Instead,
  search engines…
• Google AdWords
  Goes Yellow & Changes On Click Event
  The Google AdWords Blog just announced that they have made two changes on how
  the top sponsored listings in the Google search results are handled. (1) A
  color change from a blue background to a yellow background was pushed through
  today after much testing. (2) Now you have to click…
• Del.icio.us
  Improves Firefox Bookmarks Extension
  The del.icio.us blog announced an upgrade to their Firefox extension that
  enables the easy bookmarking of pages. The changes include: Searching and
  browsing your bookmarks can be done directly in your Firefox browser You can
  edit your bookmarks within Firefox You can define which tags to display in the
  Firefox…
• Search In
  Pictures: New Column From Search Engine Land
  Last week, Barry Schwartz tried a new idea of showing what was happening in
  the world of search based on pictures he found on the web. You liked it enough
  that we’ve decided to make it a formal column called Search In Pictures, which
  will run on Fridays here…
• Search In
  Pictures: Food, Sharks, Monkeys & God
  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 News Headlines From Elsewhere

Applications & Portal Features

• Google Talk
  widget gets better, Webware
• 
  Baidu Planning Email Service?, Pacific Epoch

Business Issues

• 
  STARTUPS: Google’s victims, Valleywag
• 
  McClatchy’s Deal With Yahoo Opens Doors, theledger.com
• Yahoo
  ‘Faced’ in Social Network Indecision?, Internet News
• 
  Ask.com Markets on Google to Lure Visitors to its Own Search Engine,
  Search Engine Roundtable
• 
  Technorati breaking away, leaving Google behind in the dust, Compete Blog
• 
  Technorati CEO Search Confirmed, TechCrunch
• 
  ADVERTISING: How to beat Google, Valleywag
• 
  UBS Analysis of Comscore Search Numbers for Feb, Searchblog

Local & Mobile

• 
  Google Allows Bulk Uploads for Local Business Listings, Small Business SEM
• 
  Where 2.0: Early Registration Ending Tuesday, O’Reilly Radar
• 
  New Interactive Print Page for Maps!, Yahoo Local & Maps Blog

Paid Search & Contextual

• Domainers Owning Google?,
  Threadwatch
• Google AdSense
  Tests Western Union Quick Cash Payment Option, Search Engine Roundtable
• 
  New Microsoft adCenter Welcome Guide, adCenter Blog

SEM Industry

• Exerting Influence
  & Moving Markets, SEO Book
• 
  In-Housekeeping 101: Where to Put Your SEO Department, Search Engine Watch
• 
  In-house Spotlight: Shopping.com’s Former SEO, Search Engine Journal

SEO & SEM

• 
  Don’t Forget About Branding, Link Building Blog

• 
  What exactly qualifies as a quality link?, Jennifer Slegg

• 
  The Worst Search Engine Spam I Have Ever Seen, James Li

• 
  Do you really need meta tags? You bet, Jennifer Slegg

Social Media

• Technorati Patent Filing on
  Blog Spam, SEO By The Sea
• Go
  Go (Reader) Gadget, Google Reader Blog

Video, Audio & Image Search

• 
  Startup aspires to be ‘Google’ of audio, video, Associated Press
• Yahoo Podcasting and Media
  Tagging Patent Applications, SEO By The Sea

Other Stuff

• 
  Turkey’s Lawmakers Move to Block Sites, Associated Press
• 
  For Cable TV, No Interest in Selling Ads the eBay Way, New York Times
• 
  CrazyEgg – Measuring Web Site Usability, Read/WriteWeb
• Naka-Yahoo! ka
  ba?* (*Are you on Yahoo!), Yahoo! Search Blog
• 
  RUMORMONGER: Two Google bridegrooms?, Valleywag