A summary of search related news items that occurred this week including Yahoo! announces oneSearch mobile search product, Jennifer Slegg provides 25 tips on how to optimize your blog for readers and search engines, Apple announces new mobile phone offering - iPhone, Cisco is upset with Apple using its trademark for iPhone and sues them, another Google PageRank update is underway but what does it really mean, and finally, Yahoo! may be using dirty tactics to switch Google & Firefox users.

Monday

• Yahoo! oneSearch Launches  - Yahoo! announces a new mobile search product, "oneSearch" in which they have taken a radically different approach toward returning and displaying results on mobile devices, while leveraging a common search technology platform. The goal with this release is to provide a rich set of relevant content for a given query from a number of different categories of results. In addition to providing relevant links to web and mobile web sites, oneSearch provides immediate answers for business listings, movies, sports, news, events, celebrity gossip, stock/finance information, and so on, all from a single search. More details at the Yahoo! Search Blog.

• 25 Tips To Optimize Your Blog For Readers & Search Engines - Jennifer Slegg puts together an excellent post which provides 25 tips bloggers can utilize to make their blogs better for both those who read them as well as search engines who crawl. A few tips include make sure you have RSS feed available, make posts available via email, write compelling snippets/descriptions, pay attention to spelling and fontography (the type of fonts you use), post often, and spread the link love (give credit to where credit is due). That's just a sampling... there's alot more over at Search Engine Land where she published the article.
  
  
• Apple Reinvents the Mobile Phone with iPhone - Apple introduced iPhone at CES 2007, which combines three products in one - a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, searching and maps. "iPhone is a revolutionary and magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone," said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. "We are all born with the ultimate pointing device—our fingers—and iPhone uses them to create the most revolutionary user interface since the mouse." More details can be found via Apple's official press release.
  

• Cisco Sues Apple for Using Term "iPhone" - Just on the heels of Apple's announcement of their new mobile phone offering, WebProNews reports that Cisco is raining on Apple's parade by suing them over its use of the term iPhone, despite reports that they were near an agreement with Apple to share the name. "Cisco entered into negotiations with Apple in good faith after Apple repeatedly asked permission to use Cisco's iPhone name," Mark Chandler, senior vice president and general counsel, Cisco, said in a statement. "There is no doubt that Apple's new phone is very exciting, but they should not be using our trademark without our permission."

• Google PageRank Update Underway, What Does It Really Mean? - Jessica Bowman gives us a great analysis of what the current Google PageRank update really means over at Search Engine Journal. Dissecting a post from Matt Cutts himself on the subject, she deals with the many misconceptions people have about PageRank updates including the fact that it is actually old data, your PageRank probably won’t change again until the next update comes out, you won’t see an instant lift/drop in traffic as a result of your new PageRank score, and finally, this is not reflective of anything that has happened since this “snapshot” was taken. Good stuff to think about for those who religiously watch PageRank.

• Yahoo Using Dirty Tactics to Switch Google & Firefox Users? - Andy Beal provides compelling evidence that suggests Yahoo is covertly trying to switch Google search users without their explicit permission. It seems that a recent upgrade to Yahoo Messenger includes an innocuous "auto-update" option. When the user gives Yahoo permission to update what they think is just Yahoo Messenger, it downloads Internet Explorer 7 (which is buggy itself) and then proceeds to high-jack many browser preferences, including search engine settings. More details including screen shots can be found at Marketing Pilgrim.