IndustryThe Search Engine Update – Number 227 – August 23, 2006

The Search Engine Update - Number 227 - August 23, 2006

Search Engine Watch editor Danny Sullivan's recap of top search engine stories from the first half of August 2006.

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In This Issue
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+ Top Stories
+ More From The Search Engine Watch Blog
+ Daily SearchCast: Search News Via Podcast
+ Our Search Newsletters & Feeds
+ About The Newsletter

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Upcoming Search Engine Strategies Events
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Top Stories
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Below is a recap of major articles from our daily SearchDay newsletter and important Search Engine Watch Blog postings since the last newsletter. Want to receive these stories daily or via RSS/feed? See the Search Engine Watch Newsletters & Web Feeds page for sign-up instructions.

=== Aug. 23, 2006 ===

Yahoo Adds Coupon Shortcut, Making Finding Coupons Easy – A new Yahoo Shortcut which gives searchers quick and easy access to coupon codes. See also: Google Maps Gets Coupons.

=== Aug. 22, 2006 ===

Google CEO Maps Missions, Stays on Message – Put Google CEO Eric Schmidt on stage with SEW’s Danny Sullivan and you get an entertaining and enlightening glimpse into the soul of the world’s favorite search machine. See also:

=== Aug. 21, 2006 ===

comScore Figures Show First Google Decline For Nearly A Year, But What To Believe? – The latest search engine share figures from comScore are now out, and Google’s nearly year-long continued rises have came to a halt in July 2006, according to comScore. But how much can you trust any of the figures that ratings services provide? In this post, I look at the latest comScore stats and begin a series about how to critically evaluate search share ratings. See also:

=== Aug. 18, 2006 ===

Washington Post Selling Text Links? – The Washington Post launched a sponsored blogroll product that allows people to pay to be listed in the blogroll….but without nofollow, does it violate Google rules about selling links?.

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GoogleCheckout.com Or Go Ogle Checkout: Google Complaints Against Google-Like Domain Names – ResourceShelf has compiled sources of historical complaints Google has issued to those who have registered Google-like domain names, including a person who said she didn’t register GoogleCheckout.com but rather “Go Ogle Checkout” for an online dating service.

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Googlers Only Have Sold GOOG Stock – Cause Of Drop In Stock Price? – Bloomberg has a very interesting report on why they believe Google’s stock has been falling this year, down about 7 percent this year. They say that Google’s executives have sold off a boatload of stock since the IPO. See also: Google’s Costs To Increase With Data Center Needs & Increased Employee Compensation.

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Search Engine Forums Spotlight – Links to the week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Buys Neven Vision to Boost Photo Management – Biggest Misconceptions People Have About SEO – Importance of Fresh Links – Kanoodle & Moniker: What unique strengths and assets do they bring together? and more.

=== Aug. 16, 2006 ===

Expose: Search Engine Bloggers Tell All – There is nothing like getting good scoop, and this is exactly what the panelists served up during the 2006 SES San Jose session, “Speaking Unofficially: Search Engine Bloggers.” See also: The Good & Bad Of Working At Yahoo.

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More than Organizing Photos? Google Acquires Neven Vision – Neven Vision has now joined Google. The company’s software makes it easier for people to find and organize their photos. But, is there more to the purchase? Looking around some blogs that discussed the acquisition holds hints to possibly more for Google.

=== Aug. 15, 2006 ===

103 Links About SES San Jose 2006 (AKA The Big Recap) – Couldn’t make it to recent monster Search Engine Strategies show in San Jose? Here’s a guide to coverage from across the web, organized into topic areas.

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What’s the Big Deal With Social Search? – Social search is garnering a lot of attention these days, but despite all the hoopla it’s not likely to displace traditional algorithmic search any time soon. See also: Who’s Who in Social Search.

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Three Years On, Google’s Trademark Usage Letters Become News Again – How long does it take the wheel to spin full circle on the internet? Apparently three years, judging from the outcry over Google’s “new” move to send out trademark protection letters asking people to be careful about how they use the word Google.

=== Aug. 14, 2006 ===

Beware: Is Your Hosting Provider Cloaking Paid Links On Your Site For Their Benefit? – Some web hosts are inserting links on sites run by their clients, without notifying the web site owner and doing it via cloaking. See also: How XSS HTML Injection Might Let Others Put Links On Your Sites.

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Google Video Replaces Froogle & Expandable More Link Added To Google Home Page – Google has removed Froogle from the home page, added Video and added a “more” link that opens up some more options, including “books,” “froogle,” “groups,” and “even more.” See also: Google Web Category Links Get Overhaul.

=== Aug. 11, 2006 ===

Search Engine Forums Spotlight – Links to the week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: SES 2006: Social Networks and SEM – Yahoo! Search Builder – Google Picked As MySpace Partner – AOL Releases Search Data, and more.

=== Aug. 9, 2006 ===

Search Privacy Concerns Humanized As The New York Times Tracks Down Anonymous AOL Searcher – Following the release of AOL’s “anonymous” search records, the New York Times tracks down the person who is about to become the most famous searcher ever: Thelma Arnold, a 62-year-old from Georgia. See also:

=== Aug. 8, 2006 ===

Yahoo Releases Updates To Site Explorer – Yahoo announced a new upgrade to the Site Explorer tool they initially launched last year, including the release of deeper details about a site. See also: Which Queries On Yahoo Search Get Redirected To Site Explorer?.

=== Aug. 7, 2006 ===

Google & MySpace In $900 Million Deal On Search & Contextual Ads – Google and MySpace have reached a deal for Google to provide search and contextual ads to MySpace, in return for giving MySpace (well, the entire Fox Interactive Media network) $900 million in guaranteed payments through 2010. See also:

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Yahoo Launches Search Builder – Yahoo has launched of Yahoo Search Builder, a way to build a search engine for your own web site or to create a search engine that checks across a collection of sites. The Yahoo Search blog has a nice overview of the new product. See also: Rollyo Adds More Functionality.

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Google & Viacom Partner In Video Ad Test – Google and Viacom have partnered to place Viacom video clips (MTV and other clips) on web site owner pages. See also:

=== Aug. 4, 2006 ===

Google Sitemaps Becomes Google Webmaster Central; Preferred Domain Tool Launched – Google Sitemaps has gained a new name along with new features. Google Webmaster Central is the new name of the former Google Sitemaps service, which now has evolved into a central place for Google to provide help information, statistics, reports and tools to help webmasters. See also:

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Searching For Other Search Engines At Search Engines – What happens if you search for search engines on the various search engines? Some try to keep you from going to their competitors.

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Search Engine Forums Spotlight – Links to the week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: The Official SES San Jose 2006 Conference Thread – Would You Tell Just One Secret? – AdSense Bad For Your Business – Yahoo! Launches A New Slurp Crawler, and more.

=== Aug. 3, 2006 ===

Learning Search Marketing via Multimedia – When you’re learning the ins-and-outs of search marketing, it can be helpful to have an expert walk you through the various tasks you need to be successful. A new multimedia search marketing course does just that.

=== Aug. 2, 2006 ===

Search Tools for Air Travelers – If you’re planning to fly somewhere, these sites can enhance and supplement your experiences with online travel search engines.

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Google-AP Deal Not Pay-Per-Click & Some Further Details – Google’s not paying the Associated Press by the click for a new deal to use AP content, and the deal might be a way for Google to sidestep legal issues while also improve its news search.

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Ask.com & Bloglines Proposes Blog Search Exclusion Tag – Ask.com & Bloglines have released a new tag that can be added to your feeds named access:restriction. The tag will tell Ask.com and Bloglines that this content is private and you do not want it included in the Ask.com or Bloglines blog search engines. The goal is for other rss search engines, from blogs, news, pictures, movies and so on, do make this a standard. More details at Bloglines.

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Industry Groups, Search Engines To Develop Click Fraud Guidelines – The Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Media Rating Council are partnering with Ask, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and others to form an industry group to establish guidelines for what constitutes valid clicks and invalid clicks on ads. See also:

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More From The SEW Blog
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Below are posts from the Search Engine Watch Blog since the last newsletter and not mentioned above. Want to keep up on daily news from the blog? Visit the home page or subscribe to the blog feed. Note that references to “I” may becoming from any of the Search Engine Watch staff who post to the blog.

=== Aug. 23, 2006 ===

Google’s Dominance Of Big & Small Companies – Fortune has a nice write up they named “How Google can make – or break – your company.” Not only does this article go over how Google can break a small online retailer who depends on organic results, but also how they can break large firms like travel agencies, newspapers, realtors, advertising firms and software makers (even Microsoft)….[MORE”

=== Aug. 22, 2006 ===

Brazil To Close Google Brazil’s Offices Over Orkut Issues? – Brazil’s federal prosecution service wants permission to file a civil lawsuit against Google over failure to release some records, with a $61 million fine and the threat of closure if it fails to comply with the information request.

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NearbyNow Brings New ‘Inventory’ To Local Search – A new site called NearbyNow is pulling together real-time POS (“point of sale”) inventory information from retailers large and small and presenting it through local-mall portal sites….[MORE”. See also: Find ‘Nearby Stores’ With Become.

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Search Medica – The GPs Search Engine – Search Medica is a search engine that has been specifically designed for GPs (General Practitioners or Doctors) to use….[MORE”

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Saving Addresses At Google & Yahoo Maps – A fairly new feature at Google Maps allows you to save locations for later use. I thought it would be useful to write a “how-to” save addresses at Google Maps and Yahoo Maps….[MORE”

=== Aug. 21, 2006 ===

ClickTracks Acquired By J.L. Halsey – The ClickTracks web analytics service has big news today, that it has been acquired by marketing technology firm J.L. Halsey….[MORE”

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Subdomains Trademark Violations? – Jews for Jesus sued the people running jewsforjesus.blogspot.com. The case was ultimately settled out of court and no ruling has been made. But this raises interesting questions. Could a subdomain be deemed a trademark violation?….[MORE”

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Google Base Adds Click & Impression Metrics For Merchants – Google Base is now showing merchants the number of times their Google Base items are viewed (impressions), clicked on and the pageviews of that item….[MORE”. See also: Google Releases Google Base API.

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Farecast Adds Cities To Flight Fare Prediction Tool – Farecast, a travel search engine that uses statistical modeling to predict if the prices of tickets will increase or decrease over time, has added cities, to include 55 U.S. cities….[MORE”

=== Aug. 18, 2006 ===

Levi.com Quietly Drops Google Checkout Due To A “Particular Issue” – MarketWatch reports that Levi Strauss & Co.’s has dropped the Google Checkout option from Levi.com, their main web site….[MORE”

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More On Google’s Warp Speed Run Into The Star Trek Convention – I wrote earlier about how Google was going to be hunting for engineers at the 5th Annual Official Star Trek Convention this week in Las Vegas. Now more news about that….[MORE” See also: Google To Party At Worldcon: Shiny!

=== Aug. 17, 2006 ===

So Long Daypop & Blogdex – Back in 2003, I wrote about a number of blog search engines emerging at that time. Feedster was brand new and Technorati still pretty young. Both were babies compared to Daypop and Blogdex. Sadly, Gary Price over at ResourceShelf notes in A Brief Tribute to Dan Chan, Daypop, and MIT’s Blogdex that neither of these pioneering services has made it to 2006.

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Seevast: It’s Kanoodle & More – Previously, Kanoodle offered both search and contextual ads. Now, Kanoodle only offers search ads. Contextual ads are being sold through a sister business unit, Pulse 360. Meanwhile, the Moniker domain traffic service has been acquired and will run as a third sister business. Above all of these is a new operating company, Seevast. For more, see this ClickZ story: Kanoodle Makes Acquisition, Becomes Seevast.

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Human Rights Group & UK House of Commons Demand Google, Yahoo, & Microsoft To Stop Censorship – Human Rights Watch told Google, Yahoo and Microsoft to be upfront with their users about the censorship and stand up to the political pressure China places on them….[MORE”

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Ask.com Adds DVD & TV Data To Movie Smart Answers – The Ask.com Blog announced an upgrade to their movie Smart Answer feature that adds DVD purchase information and TV data. Here is a brief summary of the blog entry….[MORE”. See also: Ask.com Releases ISBN Number Smart Answers.

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Former Yahoo China Head Sues Yahoo For Defamation – Zhou Hongyi, the former head of Yahoo China, has sued Yahoo for defamation….[MORE”

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Google Talk Gains Voicemail, Music Status, Photo & File Sharing Features – Google has announced that its Google Talk instant messaging platform now allows you to share files with other Google Talk users, view photos, see what others are listening to and more….[MORE”. See also:

=== Aug. 16, 2006 ===

Yahoo Partners With Go2 For Mobile Search Ads – Yahoo has signed an agreement with Go2, a mobile Yellow Pages directory service, to offer Yahoo sponsored search listings on the search results displayed on the mobile Go2 results….[MORE”

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Google WiFi Hits Mountain View For Free – Google is providing a free WiFi network under “GoogleWifi” (802.11b/g) in Mountain View, CA. Anyone can use it, including business, visitors and the 72,000+ residents….[MORE”

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Yahoo Releases Yahoo Answers API – The Yahoo Search Blog announced the release of the Yahoo Answers API….[MORE”

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101 Ways To Build Links & Popularity – Andy Hagans and Aaron Wall have compiled a list of 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity in 2006. See also: How Much Is Link Baiting Services Or Projects Worth?

=== Aug. 15, 2006 ===

Google Analytics Opens to Everyone – No Invitation Required – Google announced today that the popular Google Analytics is now instantly available to the public. No more waiting for invitation codes….[MORE”

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Rand & Barry Rank The Best Search Blogs – Rand at SEOMoz posted his “Ranking 50 Top Blogs in the Search Space,” which encouraged me to finally post my list of the “Search Blogs Am I Most Likely To Read In More Detail”….[MORE”

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Yahoo’s CEO, Terry Semel, Answers Tough Questions – Search Engine Journal pulled out some serious quotes from a Fortune Magazine interview with Yahoo’s CEO, Terry Semel….[MORE”

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Farmer Dating Web Site Sues Google Over Porn Ads – Farm Data, “a respectable meeting website for farmers,” is suing Google because ads for pornographic sites and sex sites come up for the term and Farm Date….[MORE”

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Google Hires Linux Coder, Andrew Morton – Andrew Morton, well known in the Linux world for coding under Linus Torvalds, has been hired to work at Google….[MORE”

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Microsoft adCenter Now Live In The UK – The adCenter blog announced that Microsoft adCenter is now live, Tuesday, August 15th, in the UK….[MORE”

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Yahoo, MSN, & Google Fall In Customer Satisfaction Survey – The American Customer Satisfaction Index has been released and Yahoo, MSN and Google all fell in points from last year’s results….[MORE”

=== Aug. 14, 2006 ===

Microsoft Attacks Click Spam by Looking at Noisy Behavior – Sites in search results that rank highly while serving visitors only ads are the target of a number of papers by Microsoft, submitted to the SIGIR 2006 conference held last week….[MORE”

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Googlers Go For Pizza Stunt – Start-up CambrianHouse decides to attract attention by delivering 1,000 pizzas to the Googleplex in Mountain View. Will the Googlers go for it? Yes, they do….[MORE”

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Google To Allow Pornographic Movies In Google Video? – Google has recently removed the term “pornographic” from the restrictions on uploading videos, suggesting that adult content might now be allowed….[MORE”. See also: Start Google Videos At A Specific Point In Time.

=== Aug. 11, 2006 ===

Chinese Government Opens Up Blogger Again – CIO reports that after three years, the Chinese government has opened up access to Google’s Blogger. Why did they reopen access? Well, no one really knows. Maybe it is because restricting access to Blogger won’t stop people from starting blogs with other software?

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Google Looking For Canadian R&D Office – Globe and Mail reports that Google is looking for office space in the southern part of Ontario, Canada. The new office will house as many as 200 employees, and be focused around research and development. See also:

=== Aug. 10, 2006 ===

Custom Map Icons Added For Google Local Business Ads – The Google Blog announced a new feature for Google Local business ads, named “custom map icons.” Basically, for the pinpoints found in Google Local/Maps, you can customize that pinpoint with a favicon like image. You can see an example of this implemented and more details on how it works at the Google Blog.

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Newspapers Getting Into Local Search Game – MediaNews Group, which bought the San Jose Mercury News from McClatchy, becomes the third newspaper group to employ a “guaranteed clicks” geotargeted search program for the local business market….[MORE”

=== Aug. 9, 2006 ===

Sortprice.com – Same Shopping Search, Different User Experience – Yesterday Sortprice put out a press release about being a ‘next generation’ shopping comparison engine. While I’m not so sure I’d agree with that, the larger players in the industry should pay attention to this little operation….[MORE”

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Google Jet Lawsuit Has Been Settled – The dispute with an aircraft designer over the Google founders’ private jet has been settled….[MORE”

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University of California Joins Google’s Book Scan Project – As expected the University of California is partnering with Google on the Google library scanning project….[MORE”. See also: LibreDigital Warehouse Competes With Google Book Search.

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Yelp Now Mobile With Help From Palm – Yelp Mobile is now live, offering review of local services. The site is optimized for the Treo but works on any web-enabled phone….[MORE”

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Marchex Building Out Local Search Domains – Today Marchex announced the launch of 100 new local and vertical search domains. These sites have real content, user ratings, dynamic category specific navigation and other features, which make them much more interesting than typical parked domains….[MORE”

=== Aug. 8, 2006 ===

Google Adds Video Tab to Related Links – The Google Blog announced that Google has added a new tab within the Related Links product for video….[MORE”

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Exalead Previews New Beta VersionExalead is previewing a new version. (If you want to take a peek the login is beta). It’s still early days yet, but the design is much easier on the eye and less complicated. I’ve got some initial thoughts on my own weblog but in summary it’s an overall improvement on an already excellent resource.

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New Search Patent Applications: August 8, 2006 – Focusing on the Searcher – This last week’s patent applications involving search all seem to focus upon users of search engines, and finding ways to fulfill intentions behind searches.

=== Aug. 4, 2006 ===

AOL Video Portal Is Live Today – AOL’s new video portal is live. It contains a mix of free and paid content. Video search is powered by AOL’s Truveo and Singing Fish engines. It also claims to allow full-screen viewing without degrading resolution. According to Hitwise, AOL has the sixth most popular video destination online behind YouTube, MySpace, Yahoo! Video Search, MSN Video Search, Google Video. Check it out and see how it compares.

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Get Your del.icio.us Network Badge – A new del.icio.us feature named Network Badges shows others “your user name on del.icio.us with a link to your bookmarks, how many people you have in your network, how many fans you have, as well as a link others can use to easily add you to their own del.icio.us networks”….[MORE”

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Google Grabs Former “Time” President As Head Of Ad Sales – Google has hired Eileen Naughton, former president of Time magazine, to be the head of ad sales in New York office…[MORE”

=== Aug. 3, 2006 ===

Eric Schmidt Asks Photos Of Him & Wife To Be Kept Private – The Boston Herald reports that while Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, was at the Circus Flora in Nantucket, he asked reporters not to take or distribute pictures of him and his wife….[MORE”

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The Concept Of A “Perfectly Optimized Page” – Aaron Wall at SEO Book has an excellent and thought provoking write up named The Myth of a Perfectly Optimized Page….[MORE”

=== Aug. 2, 2006 ===

Search Marketers Often Don’t Track All Referring Conversions – A 360i and SearchIgnite study shows that search marketers do not look at all “assists,” instead they primarily look at the last referring click that lead to the conversion….[MORE”

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What Is ‘Photosynth’? Microsofts’s 3D Photo Mapping Tool – The first official project/product from Microsoft’s Live Labs is called “Photosynth.” What is it? It’s hard to describe succinctly. It appears to be kind of mashup of things: photo sharing, visual search, mapping and 3-D….[MORE”

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MSN Search Hires Media Analytics Executive – Microsoft has hired Harrison Magun away from Avenue A/Razorfish Search to be the new director of media analytics….[MORE”

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USA Today Gets A Hold Of Danny Sullivan – Want to take a look at the past, present and future editor-in-chief of Search Engine Watch, Danny Sullivan? Well, today, USA Today released a little write up named “Got a search engine question? Ask Mr. Sullivan“….[MORE”

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Daily SearchCast: Search News Via Podcast
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Want to keep up with the latest in search news while you’re on the go? Try our podcast, The Daily SearchCast. It’s a 10-15 minute recap of the previous day’s news. How to tune-in?

  • Subscribe to our main SEW Blog feed, and you’ll receive the podcasts automatically when we alert readers to them each day.
  • Subscribe to our special podcast feed, and you’ll receive an alert only about new podcasts that we’ve posted.
  • Tune into WebmasterRadio.FM, where we go out live at 11:30am Eastern and then repeat at 2pm Eastern. The show archive at WebmasterRadio is here.
  • Listen via our Odeo channel, where it’s easy to see our past shows and hear them by using little play buttons right within your browser.
  • Listen online or subscribe for MP3 player downloads via our Yahoo Podcasts channel.
  • Listen via iTunes 4.9 or higher. Click here and you should find the show will load automatically in iTunes, if you have it installed. If not, then see further instructions here.

Here are the last two days’ worth of shows:

You can find all shows from previous days listed on the Daily SearchCast home page. Just select any file to download it and listed on your computer or digital audio device.

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Our Search Newsletters & Feeds
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News each day, throughout the day, alerts of new discussion threads from our Search Engine Watch Forums and more — we have a newsletter or feed that covers all of these. See our Search Engine Newsletters & Web Feeds for a full rundown on everything we offer, as well as special buttons to let you subscribe via news readers such as Rojo, My MSN, Bloglines, Feedster, Newsgator, Pluck and My Yahoo. Thanks to FeedBurner for providing our feed tracking and management services!

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About The Search Engine Update
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