Search Headlines & Links: June 30, 2006

Below, a recap of stories posted today to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with other items we’ve spotted but not blogged separately:

From The SEW Blog…

• Specialty Search Roundup #5
  Another week has passed which means it’s time for a look at a few new or updated specialty search tools that they have posted about on ResourceShelf. Btw, ResourceShelf has a new RSS feed URL. They are now at: http://www.resourceshelf.com/feed In a post about Vivisimo clustering technology now being made available for mobile searchers in Japan, we include links to a few other tools (all free) powered by Vivisimo including: + BiometaCluster (Life Sciences Meta Search and Clustering) + ClusterMed (Dynamic Clustering of PubMed) and a few others….
• eBay’s PayPal Mocks Google Checkout
  Philipp Lenssen cracked me up with just the title of his post named EBay Guy Trashes Google Checkout, Then Deletes Post. Here, read the post; I find it amusing how the general media is claiming GBuy [aka Google Checkout] will be a significant competitor to Paypal based on GBuy having near zero buyers actually using the service vs over 100MM using Paypal. Let?s recall something here folks. In its current form, GBuy is a glorified merchant account. The post was then deleted, but you can read it all here….
• GooglePlex Irvine To Revolutionize Radio Advertising
  Zachary Applegate posted his visit to the GooglePlex Irvine at SEOMoz, where he describes the demonstration given to him by Google. The demo, Zach coined, “Google AdSense Audio,” a method of “dynamically generate and change commercial content according to demographic and what is currently going on in the geographic area of radio stations.” Zach explains that Google is entering this market to enable those with “$200 budgets to break into radio advertising.” We first reported that Google was potentially entering this area, back when Google bought dMarc Broadcasting, the SEOMoz blog has screen captures of the technology and the…
• Myanmar Government Blocks Google & GMail?
  The Times of India reports that Myanmar government has blocked Internet users from reaching Google.com and Gmail. They claim users trying to reach Google and Gmail for the past week have been received “Access Denied” responses. Myanmar’s largest ISP, Bagan Cybertech, confirmed the issue that the sites were “inaccessible but declined to comment further.”…
• MSN Search To Officially Not Use Yahoo Search Marketing For Sponsored Search July 1
  I reported over the Search Engine Roundtable that Yahoo’s and MSN’s relationship is coming to an official end this month. The official Yahoo announcement can be seen here and it states, “MSN’s U.S. search distribution agreement with Yahoo! Search Marketing ends this month, and Yahoo! Sponsored Search listings will no longer appear in MSN’s U.S. search results.” MSN has been displaying mostly Microsoft adCenter ads on their search results pages for a couple months now. So the transition has been pretty gradual for advertisers and searchers….
• Yahoo Beta Tests Searchable Yahoo Mobile E-Mail
  Gary Price reports that Yahoo is beta testing a new Yahoo Mail interface here. Gary says the most notable difference between the current version and the beta version is that in the beta, you can search your mail on your mobile device….
• Ask.com Removes “Legacy Filters” To Enable Pedophilia Keyword Search
  About a week ago we covered a story that Ask.com was blocking search terms such as laws against pedophilia and preventing child pornography, amongst others. Philipp notes that Ask.com has removed the “legacy filters” to enable those types of searches. In fact, for the search on preventing child pornography, you get a special “smart answer” for “Child Abuse Resources.”…
• Search Forums Roundup: June 30, 2006
  Today’s SearchDay, Search Engine Forums Spotlight, features our weekly links to this week’s hot topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Checkout Launches – Strikes At Heart of Yahoo Stores – Persuasion Architecture and the Art of Agreement for Website Success – Guaranteed Google Listings – Link Building for Local Businesses, and more….
• Vertical Images From AdSense Include Images in Ad Units
  Vertical Images is the latest international beta test being run by Google AdSense. Vertical images displays a related generic image within the ad unit, which then links to a results page similar to the results page seen when clicking on an Ad Links keyword….
• Changes for the Yahoo Publisher Network
  The Yahoo Publisher Network has made a series of changes to their interface and support documents which seem to be appealing to the new publishers. They have also added a new “RPC” column to reporting, meaning publishers can see their average earning per click….

Other Things We Read, Didn’t Blog But You Might Want To Read…

• Inside Google’s New-Product Process: Business Week
• E-Commerce Thrives in Canada: eMarketer
• DM News’ Essential Guide to Search Engine Marketing: When It Comes to Search Result Listings, Less Is More: DMNews
• Amazon’s Google Problem: The Street
• Setback for Google in fight over faster web access: Times Online
• A new chapter for authors: Inside Google Book Search
• Sunny in Seattle: MSN Search Blog (yawn)