This Week in Search

By Betsy Carpenter, Coordinator, Marketing & Strategic Partnerships

In case you were under a rock this past week, this is a brief taste of what’s happening in the vast world of digital/search. Get to reading – you have a lot of catching up to do!

- College students keep on searchin’ – your research woes will not come back to haunt you! The Google book search lawsuit is seemingly coming to an end in what has been a three-year-old lawsuit. Apart from Google, however, more sources are on their way. Read all about Hathi Trust and the Google Book Debacle!

- Let’s take this online! The presidential fight gets digital as McCain campaign fights YouTube on the removal of several campaign videos due to infringement complaints.

- It’s good to have friends in high places, or that’s definitely the case with Microsoft lobbying the Google/Yahoo deal in Washington. Not only do they have much experience in the area, but they know how to work the interest of others, getting the American Corn Growers Association to take a stand, saying their complaint has to do “with the impact on small communities and fair competition.”

- Search cannot hide from the recession – although we may not see quite the same dip as other mediums, according to analysts, our search budgets will not see the same increase as before due to smaller overall ad budgets. Rest assured, search marketers…good news is still to come! On another note – did you see Yahoo made a jump to 20% US market share? Maybe one small step for an engine, but one giant step for the search landscape.

- This may be the beginning of a new tune as Yahoo is preparing for a nationwide campaign hoping to steal a greater portion of Google’s search pie. The campaign includes eight weeks of online and radio ads highlighting some of Yahoo’s newer search innovations.

- I promised good news - and here it is! JupiterResearch just came out with a new study stating that 92% of large search marketers would increase their PPC spend a 22% average if they had better technology and tools in place for complex campaigns. That’s billions of dollars yet to be tapped – high fives for all!

- We will be geniuses – well maybe not geniuses, but a new study shows that using web search more than doubles brain activity amongst elderly participants.

- With YouTube’s search traffic recently passing that of the number 2 engine, Yahoo, Google is striking while iron is hot by releasing what they know best – paid search results in the form of “promoted videos” on YouTube.