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Stories Discussed In The Show

• Search Marketing Now Webcasts & Search Marketing Expo Conferences Announced
  I'm happy to announce that Search Engine Land is now joined by two sister sites: the Search Marketing Now webcast series and the Search Marketing Expo conference. Search Marketing Now has its inaugural webcast on December 19, while Search Marketing Expo will have its first event in Seattle on June 4 & 5th. More information below.
• Goodbye Chicago SES, Day 4
  The final day of the conference saw blog posts about the conference's last three sets of sessions; some video interviews conducted by Lee Odden with Neil Patel and Cameron Olthius, Joshua Stylman and Peter Hershberg, Stephan Spencer, Gord Hotchkiss; and a retrospective of Day three, from the comforts of home, by Kim Krause Berg.
• Chicago SES Day 3 Session Coverage
  The social side of search came out in some of the blog posts about Chicago SES today. Search Pulse 11, broadcast live last night during cocktail hour was filled with major search issues and special on air guests. Loren at Search Engine journal writes of Jim Hedger's press conference last night, which uncovered a connection between Adsense and terrorist groups. Rand Fishkin interviewed Vanessa Fox of Google for WebProNews.
• Jason Calacanis Keynote Conversation At SES Chicago
  I had a great time talking with Jason Calacanis in a keynote conversation at SES Chicago this morning. I'm working on getting the audio file uploaded and will postscript to this when it is ready, plus it will go live on the Daily SearchCast web site. Jason covered how he's taking a position as "Entrepreneur In Action" with Sequoia Capital, discussed issues about SEO, evil on the internet, spam, paying Digg and other social bookmarking contributors plus agreed to do a word association round with me. I've only got a few minutes between sessions, so I'll point toward coverage spotted via Techmeme.
• The big Digg rig, News.com
• Diggers Are Getting Paid - But Not By Kevin Rose, Deep Jive Interests
• Video With Google On Duplicate Content, PageRank, Sitemaps & More: WebProNews has an excellent video of guest interviewer, Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz.org and Google's Vanessa Fox from the Webmaster Central team. Rand does an excellent job asking Vanessa about duplicate content, PageRank, Sitemaps and even discusses DaveN. This 17 minute video is well worth a listen to.
• Top Ten Ways To Contact Google: Reaching the Google web search team is not always an easy thing to do. That is why I came up with one of my few top ten lists, this one is named Best Way To Contact Google? I'll give you my best way and worst way to contact Google.
• Wii Rocks (But Doesn't Seem Region Free)!, Daggle
• Google Tests Showing Quality Score Data To Advertisers - PPC Discussions confirms via Traffick's interview that Google is really testing displaying some of the quality score values to AdWords advertisers. Rumors started back when PPC Discussions found a DigitalPoint Forums discussion thread mentioning that a particular advertiser was told Google will be testing this. It appears that based on Andrew Goodman's interview with Nick Fox, that this is indeed going to be tested. FYI - Yahoo already shows quality score factors in Panama to the advertiser. The question all PPC engines live with, is just how much to show to the advertiser.
• Yahoo COO Rosenweig Resigns; Company Reorganization Announced
  Yahoo has announced that it is reorganizing the company into three major operating groups, one focused on audience development, another for advertisers & publisher services and the third focusing on technology. Chief Financial Officer Susan Decker will leave her position to head the advertiser and publisher group. Chief Technology Officer Farzad Nazem will head the technology group, while a search is underway for someone to head the audience division. Along with the changes it was announced that Dan Rosensweig, Yahoo's chief operating officer, will leave Yahoo at the end of March. More details in the press release below.
• Yahoo CEO Terry Semel Says Reorg Won't Mean Big Layoffs
  The other day, Danny reported Yahoo COO Rosenweig Resigns; Company Reorganization Announced, Techcrunch now updates us that Yahoo’s Semel Says No Layoffs, Sort Of. Check out this video interview.
• Yahoo media group head Lloyd Braun to leave co., Reuters.com
• Panama Boosts Yahoo's Outlook?
  Red Herring writes Yahoo Scores With Panama—So Far. Before the rumors and news about Yahoo COO Rosenweig Resigns; Company Reorganization Announced, Yahoo's stock rose $0.48 to $27.38 from "receiving a thumbs-up from advertisers" on the Panama release.
• Yahoo To End CurrentTV Partnership
  Elinor Mills reports that Yahoo and CurrentTV are to end their partnership with the Yahoo Current Network. Why? Yahoo's statement read; "As we approach the end of the initial ramp-up period built into the partnership with CurrentTV, both parties have determined that our respective goals and objectives were diverging and mutually decided to pursue other opportunities independently."
• Google China's Co-President, Johnny Chou, To Resign
  The Pacific Epoch reports that Google's vice president has officially announced his resignation on December 8th. He will be stepping down on December 31st as the Google China's co-president, a position he held since October 2005. There is speculation that he is leaving because "Google did not support his localization plan."
• Google Begins Testing Audio Ads Within AdWords
  The Google AdWords blog announced yesterday that they have begun inviting advertisers to test out Google Audio Ads. There is a US based test going on, since the "integration is now complete." If you want to be part of this test, you can apply over here. After you get accepted, make sure to read the Guidelines for Audio Ads, describing you can use MP3 or WAV files, both 30 seconds long, no long periods of silence and only containing one ad (no sharing). More details on how this is working at the Google Help section of the audio site.
• Google Ready to Reshape Russia’s Market, Kommersant Moscow
• New England Patriots, Tom Brady, Sues Yahoo For Using His Image In Ad
  The Smoking Gun broke a story that New England Patriots quarterback, Tom Brady, has sued Yahoo for using his "likeness, image and identity in its advertisements and promotions." You can see the ad from a Sports Illustrated September 2006 issue over here, promoting Yahoo Sports Fantasy Football.
• Microsoft Releases Live Search Books Beta
  The Live Search Blog announced that Microsoft released a beta named Live Search Books this morning. Plus they enhanced Live Search Academic by adding millions of new articles, plus indexing theses, dissertations, and books within these disciplines.
• Fire in Microsoft's adCenter Data Center Brings Down Search Ads For Several Days?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Refinements Applied to Site Command Search, Search Engine Roundtable
• Viagra Spam hits US Colleges, SEO Montréal
• The Passion Of David Naylor, Shawn Hogan
• Matt Cutts On Google Rumor Debunking Rampage
  Matt Cutts has a fun weekend debunking Google rumors at his blog. He covered rumors that the toolbar leads Googlebot to index pages, a story about Google funding terrorism (a topic I avoided on purpose), Google working with the CIA as a conspiracy, and Google cheating on AdWords for their own ads. He also wrote a bit about new features that were launched.
• MICROSOFT: New search icon [Ms. Dewey] has soft-porn past, Valleywag
• Google's SearchMash Gets Features & Microsoft's Sexy, Experimental Ms. Dewey Search, Search Engine Watch Blog
• Google enticed with free parking, Ann Arbor News