The Search Engine Blog

A reminder to those who don’t read those pesky messages from Yahoo!. Your paid search listings may no long be appearing on MSN. (Now maybe you’ll read those pesky updates.) Yahoo! Search Marketing – On Target

Craiglist is a highly popular place to post classified ads in a number of cities across the country. It seems that many post roommate wanted and similar ads requesting and stating race preferences. Naturally someone with too much time on their hands saw an opportunity to “protect” us by suing Craiglist. Other online companies such as Google, Amazon.com and Yahoo are signing on as friends of Craiglist in this suit. In the past, online service providers were not held liable for online posts made by subscribers. The individual posting is responsible. For Craiglist to manually approve each ad would make the service impossible or highly expensive. Naturally this could impact Google and others signing on as they show information from other sites. Would they also be liable for what is displayed in search results? Who said common sense and the law go together? Certainly weren’t me. Law.com – Online Peers Stand Up for Craigslist in Lawsuit

Google checkout is live. Should you use it? Our opinion is to wait for others to find the bugs and any security issues. Official Google Blog: Find it with Google. Buy it with Google Checkout.

Can Congress pass a bill that limits what we can view via the Internet? Does this sound like the China policy of limiting what people can search for on Google? Here’s an update on “Net Neutrality” where Sen. Wyden is threatening to filibuster any attempts to not provide “unfettered, unlimited and free access to any site…” As net neutrality fails, Senator threatens to block legislation without it

They paid good money for this? Funny. I thought it was obvious that people don’t like loud colored, blinking, in your face ads. Well, here’s research to back up what should be common sense. People prefer common sense text ads that are relevant to the rest of the page content. Well duh! Research: Internet Users Plagued by ‘Banner Blindness’

It’s interesting. Although Alexa is not the leading indicator of traffic, it is still an indicator. Looks like Google is slipping….to number three? Google drops at Alexa!!!

If you’ve logged into your Google AdWords campaigns, you’ve probably noticed settings for time zone to allow for improved scheduling among a few other small improvements. If you haven’t logged into your account, do so now so you can at least enter the correct time zone. If you haven’t logged in, perhaps you need us to manage the campaign for you?!? Sometimes it’s the little things.

Hello Average Citizen. We want your cell phone videos and we want to assimilate them. Yahoo! is announcing a video to web service where people can upload, without a computer, videos of news events. RED HERRING | Yahoo Wants Citizen Journalism

What kind of impact will this have on Microsoft’s push into the search arena? No one knows for certain, but MS has just let their “go-guy” go. Martin Taylor, VP Of Windows Live & MSN Marketing Leaves Microsoft

You can now schedule Google AdWords. Just log in and take advantage of this long awaited feature to have ads turned on and off automatically. AdWords Ad Scheduling Officially Launches