SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 15, 2008

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

From Search Engine Land:

• 
  Search in Pictures: Yahoo Hippies, Protesting Via Google, Vint Cerf With Ask
  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….
• 
  Google Snubbed By Dow Jones
  As Canada’s Globe & Mail reports, Google wasn’t invited to join the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) when other, arguably less impressive companies were, in the first changes to the composition of the DJIA since 2004….
• 
  Four Newspapers Join To Create Another Local Network For National Advertisers
  Newspapers have watched as “their” national advertisers have gone elsewhere online to get the reach and local placements that they provided almost exclusively offline. There have been several disappointing attempts in the past to build a national network of newspaper publishers: the failed New Century Network and the existing but…
• 
  Yahoo Video Gets An Upgrade
  The Yahoo Video Blog announced that Yahoo Video has undergone some improvements. The improvements include:…
• 
  Porn Company Wants Google & Yahoo To Protect Kids From Pornography
  Porn studio wants Google, Yahoo to protect kids from adult video from the AFP reports Steven Hirsch, the co-founder of Vivid Entertainment, a pornography company, wants Google and Yahoo to do more in protecting children from accessing pornographic content. Steven Hirsch said: None of the search engines and portals, but…
• 
  Official: Microsoft Management Reorg Announced; Dueling Ad Groups?
  We expected a management shuffle from Microsoft today, and now they’ve delivered it. The company has announced seven new senior vice presidents and seven new corporate vice president. I’ll focus on the search and advertising front, where we now have two different senior vice presidents overseeing advertising. Best I can…
• 
  AdWords + Video: Video Ads Come To Google Search Results
  We’ve been expecting them — now they’ve arrived, video ads on Google. Google Tests Video Ads on Search Results Pages from the New York Times has confirmation from Google that they are out there, though I haven’t seen anyone reporting them live and in the wild yet. It really shouldn’t…

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Go Go Gadgets in Asia, Official Google Gadgets API Blog
• Gmail Help Discussion Adds Four New Colorful Gmail Guides, Search Engine Roundtable

Business Issues

• Iowa House sweetens offer to attract Microsoft, SeattlePi
• On Leaving Yahoo, Bradley Horowitz

Conferences

• SMX West 2008 Conference Coverage Schedule, Search Engine Roundtable

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google Sees Fifty Times More Traffic From iPhones Than Others, Wired

Link Building

• The Dofollow Plugin Has Been Updated, Greg Boser
• Fool’s Gold Link Exchange for Local Search Domination, AIM Clear Blog
• The Great Nofollow Link Debate of ’08, Search Engine Watch

Microhoo

• Merged Microsoft-Yahoo Would Still Struggle Vs. Google, CNN Money
• Yahoo’s Road to War – The Bumps and Scrapes in Sequence, Stepforth
• BOARD BUCKS YANG, New York Post
• Yahoo’s Chinese Math Proves Miller Is Right at $40 , Bloomberg

Paid Search & Contextual

• Revisions to Microsoft adCenter Terms and Conditions, adCenter Blog
• Google Analytics Emails AdWords Customers To Reestablish Link to AdWords, Search Engine Roundtable
• How To Changing Your Payee Name In Google AdSense, Search Engine Roundtable
• Use Demographics To Geographically Target Your PPC Ads, PPC Hero

Searching

• Search Engines in 1996, Google Blogoscoped
• Comparing Six Ways to Identify Top Blogs in Any Niche, Read/Write Web

SEM Industry

• Barry Schwartz Introduces SphinnCon Israel, illuminea
• SES London 2008 Interview – Jon Myers, endlessplain.com

SEO & SEM

• Do Not Worry About Getting Penalized For Using The Same Website Theme, SEM Spot
• Is The Google Search API Reliable Anymore?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google PageRank: Simplified, Search Engine Watch
• How stale and dated is your website?, Jennifer Slegg
• How to handle expired product listings on your website, BlogStorm
• Universal Pictures: Optimizing Video for Search, Search Engine Watch

Social Media

• Are you breathing while emailing or Twittering?, Scobleizer
• Whiteboard Friday – Blogging Community Outreach, SEOmoz

Video, Music & Image Search

• Guide to Video Marketing on YouTube, Search Engine Journal

Web Analytics

• Google Urchin Examined, WebProNews Videos
• Microsoft Gatineau screenshots from my first week, BlogStorm

Other Items

• 9 Ways to Build Your Reputation as a Blogger, ViperChill
• DITL Volume 1: News’ First Engineer, Google News Blog
• Prabhakar Raghavan Elected to National Academy of Engineering, Yahoo! Research

Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:

• How to get online advertising for free
• Who’s Tedster? If You’re an SEO, You Should Know
• Improve SEO with Google Webmaster Tools
• Tips to StumbleUpon Success
• How to Become an Authority in Your Niche: Eight Content Development Tactics
• Happy Valentines Day Search Industry
• Google SERPS Get Video Ads
• 9 Tips for Planning a Social Media Marketing Campaign
• Why Brains Crave Beneficial Copy
• 27.3 Ways To Do 51 1/2 Things on WordPress, Digg, Twitter, Stumbleupn, Blogger, Pownce, Reddit, Hugg, Sk-rt, Propeller,
• Google Analytics Tips – 5 Features You May Not Know About
• 9 Ways to Stand Out As a Conference Speaker
• 11 Tips for Appearing at Google Definitions
• SEOmoz Says “Making Up New Words != Creativity”
• Saddle Up Boys and Girls, Sphinn Needs a Posse
• The Inconvienent Truth About Social Media Marketing
• The RSS Curse
• 12-Step Recovery From PageWankerism
• Why You Should Treat Each Site As an Individual
• The Mighty Desphinn Arrives – Power to the People

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.