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Stories Discussed In The Show

• WTF! US Court Declares You Have No Privacy On YouTube
  You have no privacy on YouTube. So effectively declared a US judge yesterday. And now somebody in the US government better stop grandstanding about search and privacy protection and actually get some laws enacted now. Yesterday's move might be the ultimate incentive, as US politicians realize that what they've...
• Microsoft Preparing "Another Run" At Yahoo As Justice Dept. Begins Formal Investigation Of Google-Yahoo Search Deal
  Yesterday, after Microsoft announced it was buying semantic (or "natural language") search engine Powerset, reporters asked the question: was this deal motivated by Redmond's failed run at Yahoo? The two deals are and aren't related. If the Yahoo acquisition had happened Powerset might not have, but Microsoft didn't buy Powerset...
• Search Biz: Yahoo Morale OK, Musical Chairs At Google, Microsoft, Marc Andreessen Joins Facebook Board & Tech Giants Fight "Patent Trolls"
  Lots of action for SearchBiz today; let's start with Yahoo. Fortune reprints a purported Yahoo employee email that is very upbeat and flies in the face of the gloom and doom analysis going on in the blogs. Meanwhile TechCrunch reports on another executive loss at the company, while Carl "proxy...
• Official: Microsoft Buys Powerset
  Consistent with the rumors last week, Microsoft confirmed today that it has acquired Powerset for an undisclosed amount (speculation put it at around $100 million). The company was reportedly valued at just over $40 million. It appears that Microsoft was motivated to acquire Powerset as much or more by the...
• Ask.com Drops Map Product & Outsources To Microsoft Virtual Earth
  The LiveSide Blog reported that Chris Pendleton,Virtual Earth Evangelist posted the news that Ask.com has now dropped their own mapping product for Microsoft's Virtual Earth. Virtual Earth can now be found on Ask Maps, Ask City, and within Ask's search results as Smart Answers. It is a shame to see...
• Where You May Find Google Ads On Yahoo Search Results
  In about two months from now, we may start noticing Google ads on the Yahoo Search results page through a deal that was brokered last month. The major question now is where, how and when will Google ads appear on Yahoo? TechCrunch posted slides of the Yahoo's presentation to shareholders...
• Google Launches Google Affiliate Network & Retires Pay-Per-Action/Referrals
  Google has launched a new affiliate network named the Google Affiliate Network. In an effort to consolidate the DoubleClick acquisition, Google created the Google Affiliate Network and has announced the retirement of AdSense Referrals, which is part of Google's Pay-Per-Action product. Google launched Pay Per Action ads in March of...
• Google Brings Voice Search To Maps On Blackberry Mobile Phones
  Today Google announced a download that enables voice search for Google Maps on Blackberry devices. This is very much like the existing Windows Live Search for Mobile service with voice or Tellme for Blackberry devices (also Microsoft). Yahoo also recently integrated Vlingo's speech technology into oneSearch....
• Google-TeleAtlas Collaborate To Improve Local Data
  No matter how much 3D, imagery, flash, and other impressive functionality you build into maps, data are the core of the experience. And improving local data is like building the pyramids in a sense. It takes lots of effort from many people. For this reason Google opened up Google Maps...
• Google Now Crawling and Indexing Flash Content
  Historically, search engines have been unable to extract content, such as text and links, from Flash (SWF) files. Subsequently, much of the Flash-based content on the web has been unavailable in search results. This situation has been frustrating for web developers, who have tried to come up with workarounds to...
• The Long Road To The Debate Over "White Hat Cloaking"
  I really hate arguments over cloaking. Like really hate them. But Rand Fishkin recently did a chart outlining the degrees of "safeness" to cloaking that in turn riled up Google's Matt Cutts in comments there. No doubt others at search engines also dislike the idea that any cloaking is...
• Google Adds Positive Attributes To Look For When Hiring An SEO
  The Google Webmaster Central Blog announced that they have updated the content of the What's an SEO page to provide examples of how SEOs can help you site. Previously, the page mainly focused on what scams and things to watch out for from SEOs. Now, Google added some of the...
• How To Do A Google Reinclusion Request
  Mariya Moeva and Bergy Berghausen of Google posted an excellent step by step instruction manual and video on when and how to submit a Google reinclusion request. In short, the steps are as follows: (1) Login to Webmaster Tools and check for any crawl errors, such as "URL unreachable" or...
• Google Blocks Anti-Obama Blogs Flagged Incorrectly As Spam
  My day started reading about how Google was reportedly censoring anti-Barack Obama blogs by shutting them down on Google-owned Blogger. I quickly did some debunking in a comment on our Sphinn site -- but still, Google probably needs to do more to ensure its Blogger spam reporting tools aren't...
• Yahoo Officially Discontinued The Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool
  I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable that the Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool no longer takes you to the tool, instead it redirects you to the Yahoo Search Marketing landing page. I emailed Yahoo for a statement, and they have confirmed that they have decommissioned the tool. There are tools...
• SMX East in NYC -- Save the Date
  6 Essentials for Search Marketing Success Increase traffic with SEMaware design and copy Save money by optimizing your SEO/PPC investment Maximize natural search rankings with a killer content strategy Boost conversions by driving the high-quality traffic to your site Grow sales after selecting more effective keywords Win business by outwitting...
• Local Search... Beyond Pizza and Plumbers
  Consider these statistics: As much as $500 billion in offline purchases was influenced by the internet in 2007 (eMarketer) 89% of consumers making in-store purchases in key categories have conducted research online (BIGResearch) 82% of people using local search sites followed up with an offline action, e.g. in-store visit, phone...