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 Biz: Diller Keeps IAC Control; Googlers To Facebook; Google Earnings Downgraded & More
  IAC stays in Barry Diller's control. US government agencies look to Google's search hardware to find information. Google's hotel-industrial complex that's coming to Mountain View. Those darn declining paid clicks -- will they hurt Google's bottom line? Yahoo breaks out golden handcuffs to retain employees, while Google loses another...
• Will You Be Sued Over Your Ad Copy Usage?
  Storus Corp just successfully sued another advertiser for use of a trademarked term in the ad copy. This is the first time that I have seen a company sue another advertiser directly without relying on Google as the intermediary for filing trademark exceptions. As PPC advertisers, this affects us...
• Yahoo Takes A "Shine" To Women 25 To 54
  Perhaps the perfection of Yahoo's vertical strategy is its new blog-inspired site Shine. It's a broad mix of content from publisher partners such as Hearst Communications, Rodale and Condé Nast. It also aggregates and links to third party content and is encouraging users to blog on the site. Unlike Yahoo...
• SEO Company, Fathom Online, Acquired By Geary Interactive
  Geary Interactive have announced acquiring Fathom Online, an SEO company. Fathom was formed in 2002 and is based in San Francisco. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Geary is a full service digital marketing agency based in San Diego. Some of Fathom's employees are now working out of...
• Google Dance Is Back? Plus Google's First Live Chat Recap & Hyperactive Yahoo Slurp
  Is the Google Dance back? Well, not really, but I am noticing Google Dance-like behavior from Google based on reading some of the feedback at a WebmasterWorld thread. The Google Dance refers to how years ago, a change to Google's ranking algorithm often began showing up slowly across data centers,...
• Local Store And Inventory Data Poised To Transform "Online Shopping"
  The neglected part of the local story is about products. Often local search is discussed exclusively in terms of finding service businesses or small businesses in one's own area. But an equally important, if less obvious, part of the "local search" phenomenon is shopping in the more traditional sense....

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Google Calendar outages anger users, Computer World
• Tips for importing old email to Gmail, Official Gmail Blog
• 10 Millionth Article Written on Wikipedia, TechCrunch
• Bringing the cloud with you, Official Google Docs Blog

Business Issues

• 4 reasons why DoubleClickers should ditch Google, Valleywag

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Does Local need to be held to a higher standard? Danny Sullivan and Chris Silver Smith Respond, Mike Blumenthal
• Entropist: Google Maps of Science Fiction, Wired
• Good data drives transit directions, Google LatLong
• Google Street View Within A Gadget, SEOish
• Boston.com Offers Local Search Model, Screenwerk
• Does Local need to be held to a higher standard? Ahmed Farooq Responds, Mike Blumenthal

Link Building

• Looking Cool Can Look Link Stupid, The Link Spiel
• Use What's In Front Of You To Attract Links, Search Engine Guide
• Ask Yourself... Do You Feel Lucky (about getting those links)? Well Do You?, SEOmoz

Paid Search & Contextual

• Your adCenter Questions Answered: Part 2 - Demographic Targeting - adCenter Advertiser, adcentercommunity.com
• How to Check the Status of an Ad Group in PHP (V5) - adCenter API, adcentercommunity.com
• Worth a Look: Google Uses Massive Amounts of Data to Combat Fraud, Traffick
• Study: Web Users Dislike Being Tracked, Even Anonymously, MediaPost
• Content Ad Campaign Keyword Strategy Revisited, Search Engine Watch
• Using Clickbooth as an AdSense alternative, JenSense
• Yahoo! Search Marketing Announces New Customer Support Hours, Search Engine Roundtable

Searching

• Dutch Health Search Engine MediGO, altsearchengines.com
• Google's Asian Homepages, Google Operating System
• Search Hoops: Exercising Technology to Meeting User Needs : Beyond Search, arnoldit.com
• Semantic Search and Semantic Web, Two Different Things, Hakia Blog
• UK Shopping Search Engine Twenga.co.uk, altsearchengines.com
• Social search approaches and algorithm-based search engines in comparison, altsearchengines.com
• Not Your Ordinary Google Interface, Google Operating System
• Google 404 Error Pages Become Intelligent and More Useful, Digital Inspiration
• APRIL 1st IS THE ANNUAL DAY WITHOUT GOOGLE!, altsearchengines.com
• Google Code Snippets Onebox, Google Blogoscoped
• Google Still Doesn't Know Where to Place Related Searches, Google Operating System
• Mahalo Updates: Now a Research Engine, Want Pay? Write More Words, SEO Critical, CenterNetworks
• Windows Search 4.0 vs. Google Desktop 5.5, Download Squad

SEM Industry

• Search Standards, Part 1, McAnerin Muse
• Eric Enge interviews Kevin Lee About SEM, Stone Temple
• First to 300 Sphinns: Thank You Bionic Sphinners, John Andrews

SEO & SEM

• From Search Results to Content Creation, Google Operating System
• Free Firefox Rank Checker - Check Your Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft Search Engine Rankings, SEO Book
• Is Google Seeing index.html the Same as the Root Domain?, Search Engine Roundtable

Social Media

• 10 Features I Wish Twitter Would Implement, Jason Bartholme
• LinkedIn Now Offering Network RSS Feeds, TechCrunch
• How to Deal with Negative Social Network Groups, ViperChill
• Facebook friends not real friends: judge, The Sydney Morning Herald
• Stumbling to Success Part I, endlessplain.com

Video, Music & Image Search

• Google inks Japan copyright pact for YouTube, HollywoodReporter.com
• Google Risks Muslim Backlash By Hosting Fitna, TechCrunch

Web Analytics

• Will Woopra Whip Google Analytics' Butt?, Marketing Pilgrim

Other Items

• Content owners should drop Yahoo for Google, Calacanis
• Daily SearchCast, March 27, 2008: YouTube Stats, SEO Standards , Daily SearchCast
• Google Ad in Beijing, Google Blogoscoped
• Google launches Dajare in Japan, Googling Google
• Google's April Fool's Joke for Japan (Probably), Google Blogoscoped

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

• The Power of Support on Twitter
• Seven Deadly Sins of SEO
• Search Engine Ranking Checking Tool From SEObook
• Free Firefox Rank Checker from SEOBook.com
• SEO Rapper Chuck: The 'Poetic Viral Marketer'
• IM-NY & BOTW Rally the Search Industry to Raise More Than $16K for the Leukemia Society
• Enterprise SEO: 8 Ways To Stay Sane
• Another Sphinn Spam Rant
• 10 Features I Wish Twitter Would Implement
• Looking Cool Can Look Link Stupid
• We Don't Need No Stinkin' Standards. Do We?
• Google Snippet Rules Re Blogs Change
• New SEM Firm Rating Site: Tempting Fate?
• Baiting and Beseeching: Obtaining the right mix of chasing links and getting them to chase you
• Google Bombs, Jew Watch News & the Hypocritical Linking Universe
• The Internet Marketing Unlist: 49 Things You Probably Are Doing But Shouldn't
• Debauchery, Douchebaggary, & Drunkenness: Being A Twit
• Microsoft adCenter - Where's The Revenue?
• 96 Women Bloggers to Watch for Spring 2008
• In Praise of Sphinn's One-Hit Wonder
• What If You Could Take Your Robots.txt File To The Bar?
• Google Offers Robots.txt Generator
• Googles Great Wall of SERP defense

IAC stays in Barry Diller's control. US government agencies look to Google's search hardware to find information. Google's hotel-industrial complex that's coming to Mountain View. Those darn declining paid clicks -- will they hurt Google's bottom line? Yahoo breaks out golden handcuffs to retain employees, while Google loses another one to Facebook. And more in today's Search Biz!

Click to continue reading...

Perhaps the perfection of Yahoo's vertical strategy is its new blog-inspired site Shine. It's a broad mix of content from publisher partners such as Hearst Communications, Rodale and Condé Nast. It also aggregates and links to third party content and is encouraging users to blog on the site. Unlike Yahoo content-specific sites like Food, Shine is a kind of meta-vertical and focuses on a key Internet audience: women aged 25 to 54.

Click to continue reading...

Geary Interactive have announced acquiring Fathom Online, an SEO company.

Fathom was formed in 2002 and is based in San Francisco. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Geary is a full service digital marketing agency based in San Diego. Some of Fathom's employees are now working out of the San Diego office.

Click to continue reading...

A two-hour live season finale of the Celebrity version of The Apprentice seems somewhat frivolous. It’s almost as if Trump is taking this seriously. Maybe this gives us a little more insight on how un-seriously Trump takes the regular seasons when someone will actually be working for him.

But the ratings must be good. On signing off Trump declared they’d be around for “many more years”. My hope is that they get back to what made the show great to begin with, that is being about the business tasks and not about the personalities.

I’ll admit that Celebrity Apprentice afforded some of the best episodes ever for the series. But I think that’s the nature of celebrities. Many of them don’t feel they have to get along and certainly don’t feel they need to succeed here. Regular candidates do, so when you try to make the show about the personalities, you’ll always come up short.

So instead, get back to making the show about achieving difficult tasks. Stress these people to the max. No antics like sleeping outside in a tent, but push them to their limits in the tasks. Give them time to do it well, but make it difficult to do any job well.

But enough of my ranting. I’m not sure I have many business lessons from the final episode. I could talk about putting aside old rivalries. Piers made a point about doing that with Stephen, but only to the point where Stephen disagreed with Piers on methodology. But instead, let’s talk about the decision Trump made in declaring Piers the winner.

The Last Business Lesson of the Season:

Despite all the silly firing decisions made over this season, the winner turned out to be totally correct. Yeah, we all wanted the cowboy to win. He’s a nicer guy. But face it, Trace didn’t win any tasks and Piers did. And in the final task Piers brought in a considerably larger chunk of money.

Most businesses don’t care how big of a jerk someone is as long as they are effective. I don’t say this as a negative. It is what it is. You can have the biggest jerk manager there is, but if they run an effective ship then they are gold, as far as the business is concerned.

I don’t think that is an excuse to be a crappy people manager. Those that are have a hard time finding and keeping good people. And an effective manager that is also effective with people will likely be even more effective. But a nice guy that really isn’t as effective as the office jerk simply won’t last long.

But also remember this, the manager that can’t build a loyal team needs to always make up for it in performance. As soon as there is a chink in the armor it will be taken advantage of and that person can and will be taken down. Bottom line, effectiveness is key, but don’t make enemies along the way.

The neglected part of the local story is about products. Often local search is discussed exclusively in terms of finding service businesses or small businesses in one's own area. But an equally important, if less obvious, part of the "local search" phenomenon is shopping in the more traditional sense. I've written previous Locals Only columns about the widespread -- indeed dominant -- consumer phenomenon of research online-buy offline. Now a new study by Krillion and the E-Tailing Group sheds more light on this complex and important trend.

Click to continue reading...

The neglected part of the local story is about products. Often local search is discussed exclusively in terms of finding service businesses or small businesses in one's own area. But an equally important, if less obvious, part of the "local search" phenomenon is shopping in the more traditional sense. I've written previous Locals Only columns about the widespread -- indeed dominant -- consumer phenomenon of research online-buy offline. Now a new study by Krillion and the E-Tailing Group sheds more light on this complex and important trend.

Click to continue reading...

I've heard Yahoo's local radio ads a few times while driving around the Bay area. I'm going to save my detailed thoughts on them to an audio post, but suffice to say, I had mixed feelings when I heard them. Radio ads in general seem to play over on the stupid side of the yard, but what I found interesting was the direct mention of Google - twice - and the use of an associated wolf howl. Webmasterworld thread on the new ads is here. News.com story here.

Regardless, offline marketing of search can, no doubt, boost share. Why? Because honestly, there's not much further down Yahoo's share can go. With Ask all but throwing in the towel, Yahoo is one notch closer to the bottom (yeah, I know, Microsoft is lower, but I sense they could be, as many in the industry have said to me, lying in the weeds for a reason....).

Marketing can work. For a fleeting moment, before its evisceration, Ask proved it. But tactical and experimental marketing -which clearly is what Yahoo's radio play is all about - has to keep brand in mind. The radio ads, well, they may move the sampling needle, but I'm not sure about the overall brand.

Who's watching that for Yahoo right now?

But wait! There's more!

Tonight I saw a Yahoo integration with a Honda television ad (it was a reasonably annoying green ad, but that's a bit besides the point, as the Honda brand overall has a good vibe). The integration struck me as smart, poorly executed, but possibly very important.

At the end, it showed the Yahoo search interface (it looks nice all alone) and said "For special deals (or something like that), search for Shop Honda on Yahoo".

Of course, the first time I tried it, I only put in "Honda". Who remembers to search for "Shop Honda"? Here is the search and the resulting image at the top of the results:

I think the execution leaves a lot to be desired. First, it does not acknowledge the TV tie in. That breaks a cardinal rule of conversational marketing. The call to action, the initiation of the dialog, was on TV. I responded by searching for Honda on Yahoo. Then I got the above result. While clearly different (it's an "enhanced paid listing"), it should at least acknowledge a link to the original conversation starter - hell, an "As Seen on TV" would have been better. The call to action implied I was going to get something cool for my effort of searching on Yahoo. The response did not pay off.

Now, when you search for "Shop Honda", you get something a bit more conversational.

Not there, but better. The landing page is also a bit more customized (you get a shopping interface!), but man, it's a huge dropped ball. I mean, come on. If someone takes the time to respond to a call to action from a television commercial, at least acknowledge it, thank them for it, and offer some value exchange for the initiation of dialog. But no, nothing like that.

Regardless, I see in this the seed of a very, very good idea in this. I am not sure what the business deal was, but I could imagine really blowing it out along the lines of the Intel Inside campaign (in this pioneering partner marketing program, Intel pays its partners to runs INtel Inside branding in the partner ads. It works.) If Yahoo's going to spend marketing dollars to gain share, it has to do it in a major, integrated way. Why not partner with major national brand advertisers, partially underwriting their TV advertising with an final few frames that say "Search for {insert brand here} on Yahoo for special offers" or somesuch? Once the effort proves itself out in conversions, this marketing program could well become a major money maker for Yahoo. Regardless, it'll really build the brand as an option for commercial searching, in a good way, if it's run with quality, transparency, value and engagement in mind.

Tweak the enhanced listings, offers, and landing pages to better reflect the best practices of conversational marketing, and there could really be a there there. But of course, that takes brand understanding, and what with the focus on ad networks....well.

This idea plays off the one thing Yahoo is (or used to be) really good at - understanding brand advertisers. You can't write an algorithm to do this. You have to think like a human being. It scales, but not without applying conversations to all parts of the execution - and that's scaling humans where humans scale best.

Just a thought.

This house ad. Love the implied jab at Google.

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: Google Shooting Range, Yahoo Asia Schwag, Google Pizza
  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....
• In The Trenches, March 28, 2008
  In The Trenches is a weekly spotlight of tips, tricks, and news about the tools search engine marketing professionals use to give them a leg up on the competition. Today: News from the search engines, today's in-depth look, "What You Don't Know About Quality Scores May Kill You," and...
• In The Trenches: New Column From Search Engine Land
  Our newest Search Engine Land column, In The Trenches, launches today. In The Trenches is a weekly spotlight of tips, tricks, and news about the tools search engine marketing professionals use to give them a leg up on the competition. In today's debut article, Josh Dreller comments on news...
• Google Adds 13 Metro Areas To Street Views, Plus New API Support
  The Google LatLong Blog announced the expansion of street views to Google Maps. Google added 13 new metropolitan areas and Yosemite National Park. The 13 metro areas include Albuquerque, NM, Anchorage, AK, Austin, TX, Cleveland, OH, Fairbanks, AK, Little Rock, AR, Madison, WI, Nashville, TN, Rockford, IL, Richmond, VA, Spokane,...

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Google Calendar Spam, Google Blogoscoped
• Where do People Go After Visiting Wikipedia?, Hitwise
• Now available in 48 languages, Official Google Docs Blog

Business Issues

• Can Google Stop the Brain Drain?, Wired
• Facebook Investor Li Ka-Shing Upping Stake Past $100 Million?, paidContent.org
• Google to announce DoubleClick layoffs on April 1 -- no fooling, Valleywag
• Rescuecom v. Google Pre-Oral Argument Details, Eric Goldman
• A Letter from Larry Page, Google Operating System
• Google Throws $1M at Comsenz to Dominate Chinese Market, mashable.com
• National Health Data Network To Include Google, Microsoft PHRs, iHealthBeat

Local, Maps & Mobile

• The SBS Interview: Brian Gil, Yahoo Local, Small Business SEM
• Mobile Search : World of Opportunity, Search Engine Journal

Link Building

• Google Barters Backlinks to Show The Way, John Andrews
• Link Analysis Tool : The ultimate open source SEO tool, BlogStorm
• The Changing Face of Link Buying, SEO Book
• Link Building Rap Video, Link Building Best Practices
• SEO Porn Links, SEO Book
• Whiteboard Friday - Using Trust Rank to Guide Your Link Building, SEOmoz

Microhoo

• M'SOFT NOT YET ON BOARD , New York Post
• The New York Post Got It Wrong - Microsoft's Alternate Board Slate For Yahoo Is All Sewn Up, TechCrunch
• China Law Could Impede Microsoft Deal for Yahoo, New York Times
• How Yahoo Could Avoid Microsoft - Part 1, Traffick
• What's Yahoo worth to Microsoft without Alibaba?, ZDNet

Paid Search & Contextual

• Another look at optimizations, Inside AdSense
• Google AdSense Finally Says NO to Blending Your Ads, Search Engine Roundtable
• Have You Ever Recovered from a $10 Google AdWords Quality Score?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Is Your Geo-Targeting Set Properly in MSN adCenter? Find Out!, PPC Hero
• Microsoft adCenter Keyword Limits, Search Engine Roundtable

Searching

• Travel Search Engine Kango is now UpTake, altsearchengines.com
• Yahoo! Pushes 26.5 Million Microformats Into the Wild, Read/Write Web

SEM Industry

• I Know The Google Founders & These Ain't Them, Daggle
• SEO Class Troy NY April 11th - Free to IM Ninjas, Jim Boykin
• We Do Need SEO Standards, BruceClay.com
• Google Knows I Blog for Google, Googlified
• Microsoft's Live Search Rep Violates WebmasterWorld's Terms of Service, Search Engine Roundtable
• Thoughts On Search Engine Strategies NYC 2008, MediaPost
• What Matters Most to Travel Search Marketers in 2008?, Search Engine Watch

SEO & SEM

• 8 Factors to Cover in a Competitive Analysis, Search Engine Guide
• Google Site-Specific Search-Within-Search Tool--Why is Everyone So Worked Up About This?, Eric Goldman
• Google Analytics Is Leaking Our Data Into Google's Index, SEO ROI
• Google Webmaster Tools Verification Temporary Bug, Search Engine Roundtable
• Reputation Management? Don't Forget PPC & Universal Search, E-Consultancy
• The SEO Copywriter: Wordsmithing the Web, Search Engine Watch

Social Media

• 5 Tips on Social Media Advertising, Online Marketing Blog
• The latest updates from your friends, Orkut Blog

Video, Music & Image Search

• YouTube Removes Videos Banned in Turkey, The Associated Press

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

• Google's Indexing Site Searches
• Why Does Your Search Traffic Suck? The 7 Most Likely Reasons
• Google TOS: No One Under 18 Allowed to Use Google
• Google Removes Search in Search for Amazon.com
• 5 Tips on Social Media Advertising
• LinkedIn's Buggy Company Profiles Bug Me
• Dofollow Blog Commenting Netiquette vs a Barbecue Party
• WordPress Guide: How to Force Your Blog To Load Fast
• SEO: On the trail of why some fail
• We Do Need SEO Standards
• 8 Factors to Cover in a Competitive Analysis
• Fighting MapSpam in Local - an insider's perspective
• HatedOrLoved.com a Digg Clone with a Cool Twist
• Linkbait in difficult industries
• Website Link Architecture for text links and image ALT text
• How Google is killing sites for buying or selling link
• Aaron Wall Outside the Box on Independent Webmastering, Hiring etc.
• Open Discussion For Dealing With Site Crackers
• Do Privacy Policies Help Establish a Site's Trustworthiness?
• 5 Ways to Get the Opinion of Others and Add Dimensions to Your Blog
• How a Few Measly Words can Dramatically Improve Your Blog Headline and Content
• Social Media Guide for Big Brand Corporate Businesses
• Is Hiding Content With "Display: None" Legitimate SEO?