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In another case of major mapspam (discovered first by Imnotadoctor), an SMB-local internet market firm, Big Local, has captured many of the top positions in the Google Maps "onebox" for the category "internet consulting." Below are some examples from various cities.

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So my site was hacked and Google supported me by blocking my blog from their search engine. Which I totally understand, searchers must be protected. But why make the process of trying to get back so long and painful and with zero feedback. I guess the answer to that is, “because we can.”I don’t [...]

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In celebration of Search Engine Strategies' 10-year anniversary, SES San Jose 2008 will host the first annual SES Awards ceremony. The SES Awards will be held Wednesday, August 20, 2008, hosted by Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Strategies.

Winners will be selected in each of the following categories:

* Technology Platform Search Marketers Can't Live Without
* Best Business-to-Business Search Marketing Campaign
* Most Innovative Use of Search Engine Optimization
* Search Engine with Most Relevant Search Results
* Best Multi-National Search Marketing Campaign
* Best Integration of Search with Other Media
* Best SEM Technology Platform for SMBs
* Best Social Media Marketing Campaign
* Most Advertiser-Friendly Search Engine
* Most Innovative Paid Search Campaign
* Most Effective Use of Web Analytics
* Most Innovative New Search Engine
* Best Search Engine Ad Platform
* Best Web Analytics Platform
* Best Use of Local Search
* Editor's Choice

The mission of the SES Awards: to inspire innovation and encourage new ideas. The SES Awards honor 15 outstanding winners in the search universe. The awards will be judged by a panel of industry experts and the SES Awards editorial staff.

The Editor's Choice award winner will be selected exclusively by the SES Awards editorial staff.

Can you guess who the SES Awards judges will be?

Questions? SES Awards FAQ has your answers.

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Below is what happened in search today, as reported onSearch Engine Land and from other places across the web

From Search Engine Land:

• WSJ: Microsoft, Yahoo Talking To Avoid Hostile Proxy Fight
  The Wall Street Journal is now reporting that Microsoft and Yahoo are holding talks to try and avoid the promised proxy battle/hostile takeover effort that is certain to be wearying for both sides. According to the paper: "Talks between Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. intensified Friday as the two sides...
• Local Internet Marketing Firm Spams Google Maps Bigtime
  In another case of major mapspam (discovered first by Imnotadoctor), a SMB-local internet market firm, Big Local, has captured many of the top positions in the Google Maps "onebox" for the category "internet consulting." Below are some examples from various cities....
• Thanks For Taking Our Survey; And The SMX Ticket Winner Is...
  A big "thank you" to all 375 of you who completed our Search Engine Land audience survey. We won't ask again for another year. Promise. You're a very impressive group in terms of seniority and buying power. Here are a couple of the survey results:...
• Search In Pictures: Yahoo Baby, Google Megaphone, Alanis Morissette
  In this week's Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more....
• Indiana Jones Search: Indy Meets Microsoft Live Search
  For over a year, Microsoft has been experimenting with games to help build its search marketshare. Yesterday, I learned of one that certainly caught my eye: Indiana Jones Search....
• Google News Comes To iPhone, Plus Goes Global With Interface
  The Google News Blog announced that they have launched a special interface for the iPhone. To access it, all you need to do is go to Google.com on your iPhone or iPod Touch and navigate to the news section via the "more" link at the top right or you can...
• Microsoft Releases "Renaissance" Version of Live Search QnA
  The Live Search QnA Blog announced a new release of Live Search QnA. Live Search QnA is Microsoft's question and answer engine, similar to Yahoo Answers. This new release was coined the "Renaissance release," and includes the following enhancements....
• SEM News, The Single Best SEM Report & Nielson's BlogPulse Trend Search
  In The Trenches is a weekly spotlight of tips, tricks, and news about the tools search engine marketing professionals use to give them a leg up on the competition. Today: News from the search engines, today's in-depth look, "The Single Best Report in SEM" and this week's free tips...
• Human Hardware: You??™re Looking, but are You Seeing?
  So far in the Human Hardware series, we??™ve dealt with working memory (a just released study confirms the limitations of this. See my note at the end of this column), differences between sexes and Dunbar??™s number (Parts One and Two). Today, I want to explore how we can look...
• WSJ: Yahoo Poised To Announce Google Ads Deal; Ballmer Says Microsoft Could Go It Alone
  According to the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo is ready to formally announce a deal to incorporate Google AdWords into its search results -- potentially within a week. The deal could be part of a larger "open" system in which Yahoo serves the most lucrative ad in search results from its...

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Blogger now schedules future-dated posts, Blogger Buzz
• Google, IBM Join Forces To Dominate 'Cloud Computing', InformationWeek
• Google Docs goes wild, Official Google Docs Blog
• Want your docs to be stylin'?, Official Google Docs Blog
• Breaking Google's audio CAPTCHA, IDG
• Streaming Office: Death knell for Google Apps?, InfoWorld

Business Issues

• Ien Cheng leaves FT.com for Google job, The Guardian

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Yahoo! Local Search Now in Public Beta, Techtree.com India
• Big Local - The Biggest Google Map Spam Ever, I Am Not A Doctor

Link Building

• The New Face of Reciprocal Links: Widgetbait, seoroi.com

Microhoo

• Ballmer to Microsofties: "Yahoo Announcement in Very Short Order", Silicon Alley Insider
• Found: Yang's Lost Microsoft Money, Forbes
• Ballmer Tells Microsoft Troops He's Not Insane: Willing To Walk Away From Yahoo, Silicon Alley Insider

Paid Search & Contextual

• Google Adsense Testing New Font Styles?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Have You Set Your PPC Goals for the Month? Do It Now!, PPC Hero
• Screenshots of Google AdSense Ads in FeedBurner RSS Feeds, Digital Inspiration

Searching

• Can Social Bookmarking Improve Web Search?, altsearchengines.com
• Ask.com Search Engine - A Brief History, Search Engine Guide

SEM Industry

• SEO Career Advice from an Out-of-Work SEO, Small Business SEM
• Six Questions With Vanessa Fox, BruceClay.com

SEO & SEM

• Cool Keyword Research Tool: Search Radar, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Crawl Rate Drops: Google Responds?, Search Engine Roundtable
• How Poor Product Categorization Creates Duplicate Content and Frustrates Your Shoppers, Search Engine Guide
• Implementing a 301 (Permanent) Redirect - Part Two, SEO Speedwagon
• Plugging Up Those Duplicate Content Holes, BruceClay.com
• Site Clinic: Content Is Key To Attracting Customers, Search Engine Guide
• Targeting Conversions and Traffic with Long Tail Writing, Search Engine Guide
• The Top Five Arguments for Using SEO, SEOptimise

Social Media

• The Decline and Fall of Quality on Digg, Read/Write Web
• Facebook Apps Are Still For Toddlers: The Visual Proof, AllThingsD
• How Spying On Your Friends Causes Reevaluation of Endorsed Content, Techipedia

Video, Music & Image Search

• Videos in the Flickr API, Flickr Developer Blog
• VisualRank, Official Google Research Blog
• Hulu Brings NBC (and FOX) Back to YouTube, NewTeeVee

Other Items

• Larry Page on how to change the world, CNN Money

Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:

• Insurance affiliates continue to leave UK market
• Fight Sphinn Spam: Win Cash And Search College Course w Kalena!
• What SEO/SEM Professionals Should Know About Website Usability - Part 2
• Using PPC Typo Data To Win In SEO
• Tesco 1st UK Brand to Take Stand Against Brand Bidding
• Sure Fire Signs You're Addicted to Blogging
• Some Thoughts on SEO Ethics by Matt McGee, Michael Gray, Jeff Quipp, Jim Hedger and More
• Top Search Marketing Blogs by RSS Subscribers
• The Art of Opportunistic Linking

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I revisited today an older post of mine that talks about paid links and the problems that I have with the way how Google is trying to solve the problem. One of the last comments to the post asked a question, which many professional SEOs probably asked themselves too. I never did, because I am [...]

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Google AdSense publishers are reporting via WebmasterWorld that Google is testing new fonts for the ad titles of the Google contextual ads. The new font styles seen include: Comic SansTimes New Roman The folks in the forum find the Comic...

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In closing out April and moving into May, we had a fairly slow week of search forum news. We discussed how Google leaked AdWords ranking scores, a Google PageRank update and a Sitelink update. We also saw how GoogleBot is...

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