After a cloudy week, it's sunnier and breezier out today. Looks like this weekend will be quite nice. But before you go anywhere, let's recap what happened in the world of search this week.
First, some milestones:
Search Engine Watch Turns 10
Last weekend, Search Engine Watch celebrated its 10th birthday. Danny covered the history of Search Engine Watch on Search Engine Land, and it's amazing how he created an incredible resource and reflects on its growth. I wish I were around for those years, but I'm glad I'm in the space now.
Kim Krause Berg Joins SiteLogic
Our contributing author Kim Krause Berg has joined Matt Bailey at SiteLogic. She will be doing consulting on a long-term project but her blog and forums will remain the same. Again, congratulations, Kim!
And now, conferences:
High Rankings Seminar
Today is the last day that you can get a discount for signing up through Search Engine Roundtable for the High Rankings Seminar to be held on June 28 and 29th in Denver, Colorado. Jill Whalen, who is running the event, has a great team of speakers lined up. It should be good!
Search Engine Strategies Toronto
We thought we had coverage for SES Toronto 2007, but unfortunately, it didn't work out for us as our conference correspondent didn't make it to Toronto after all. To those who attended: how was it?
On the note of the Search Engine Strategies conference series, the future of SES is discussed in the forums this week. What would you like to see? I encourage everyone who has feedback to join the discussion.
And back to our regularly scheduled announcements:
Vanessa Fox Leaves Google, Susan Moskwa Joins the Webmaster Central Team
Vanessa Fox has left Google and has moved to to Zillow. I've known Vanessa for just a few months but she's been very personable and approachable, and Zillow is quite lucky to have her. Congratulations to Vanessa.
The newest addition to the Google Webmaster Central team is Susan Moskwa, who just so happens to be a very cool person who I was happy to meet at both SES NY and SMX. Susan, congrats to you as well. :)
Other Google Webmaster Central News
There have been many developments with Google Webmaster Central lately. The interface has been cleaned up and you can now report paid links easily using the paid link report tool.
Google AdWords IP Banning, Google AdSense Allows Specific Sites
Google AdWords now allows you to ban IPs from clicking on your ads. That way, if you know your competitors are clicking on those ads, you can filter them out so that you're not paying for a click that won't yield to any conversions. This should be huge.
Additionally, Google is allowing AdSense publishers to specify which sites are allowed to display AdSense ads with their publisher IDs.
Google Enhanced Custom Search Engine
This week, Google has launched an enhanced custom search engine that enables Google to search sites that link from the page that the search engine code is stored. This should come in handy for sites with blogrolls (similar subjects) and especially directories.
Google and eBay at Odds
Google and eBay have run into a cat and mouse game where Google apparently tried to hold an event near an eBay party in Boston to persuade users to switch to Google Checkout. eBay has responded by pulling their ads from Google AdWords. It's gotten pretty messy, as John Battelle has pointed out.
Yahoo Defends Company, Ask.com Confused with Google
In small or big news (however you see it) this week, Yahoo's performance has been challenged by investors. The company is seemingly in growing pains, but it's evident that Terry Semel is getting used to the fact that Google has clearly moved ahead. Yahoo still has promise, and there just so happen to be people who would rather use Yahoo than Google, so it's quite possible that Yahoo can be victorious as long as those growing pains go away.
The Ask.com campaign is confusing a number of users who think it's actually a Google marketing tactic. After the story hit the Digg frontpage, a number of Digg users felt this was a Google marketing campaign. The Ask.com domain is just not very apparent in these commercials and ads.
Weekend Plans?
It should be a nice weekend, and on Sunday, it's father's day! Happy Father's Day, guys! Make sure you check out Search Engine Roundtable on Sunday to see our pretty theme that our graphic designer, Skew, has been working on!
