Weekly Rap-up of Search Engine Industry News – 3/19 – 3/23

A summary of search related news items that occurred this week including Yahoo! continues to take steps on setting the standard for mobile search by expanding its oneSearch service, Google puts their pay per action pricing option into beta test and invites participants, Google denies rumors that it is developing a mobile phone, News Corp. and NBC combines forces to build YouTube rival, and finally, Thomas McMahon from Online Marketing Blog provides us 10 suggestions on how to cut out blog spam.

Monday

• Yahoo Expands oneSearch Setting the Standard for Mobile Search - Search Engine Journal reports that Yahoo! has expanded the reach of its Yahoo! oneSearch service beyond Yahoo Go users to all US mobile web users. What this means is that now almost any mobile web user (compatible more than 85 percent of mobile phones through the mobile web) can log into Yahoo oneSearch and Yahoo will return the oneSearch experience best suited for that phone or mobile PDA’s browser. This also creates the opportunity for Yahoo! Search Marketing advertisers to reach the mobile user as sponsored search results are built into the experience. Consumers click on a sponsored search ad which then sends them to the advertisers’ mobile web site, landing page or to call the advertiser.

Tuesday

• Google Rolls Out Beta Test for Pay Per Action Ads - Google invites participants to test its new “pay-per-action” pricing option. This new pricing model will allow users you to pay only for completed actions that they define, such as a lead, a sale, or a page view, etc., after a user has clicked on their ad on a publisher’s site. At this time, the pay-per-action beta test is only available to U.S. advertisers. In addition, the advertiser must already be using conversion tracking or be able to implement conversion tracking so that Google can track completed actions. Andy Beal offers his own opinions on this new pricing option and suggests that it may be a threat to affiliate networks such as Commission Junction and Linkshare. Google doesn’t see it that way but then again, they don’t see themselves competing with Microsoft Office either even though in reality they are.

Wednesday

• Google Mobile Phone Only a Rumor – It was reported last week that Google was developing a mobile phone, primarily for underdeveloped countries. Well now executives that are higher up on the chain deny the rumors. “Becoming an equipment manufacturer is pretty far from our business model,” said Vinton Cerf. Richard Kimber, Google’s managing director of sales and operations in Southeast Asia also denied the rumor stating, “At this point in time, we are very focused on the software, not the phone.” Seems to me that Google is getting so big and into so much stuff that no one knows what is going on anymore.

Thursday

• News Corp and NBC Combine Forces To Challenge YouTube - The L.A. Times is reporting that several media giants including News Corp. and NBC are working to create an online video site similar to YouTube. The site will be stocked with TV shows and movies, plus clips that users can modify and share with friends, according to people close to the negotiations. News Corp. and NBC Universal want to control how their shows are watched online and to hold onto advertising dollars migrating to the web as Google is expected to gobble up nearly a third of all online advertising revenue this year, according to research firm EMarketer. AOL, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo! will be the new site’s initial distribution partners according to the official press release.

Friday

• 10 Suggestions on How To Combat Blog Spam – If you run a blog and allow comments then no doubt you have had to deal with comment spam. Thomas McMahon provides 10 suggestions over at Online marketing Blog on what actions bloggers can take to cut down or even eliminate blog spam. Solutions include Akismet, Spam Karma or even Captcha. Currently I require people to log in to TypePad which I don’t think is the best solution. Maybe when I get some free time I’ll look around for a better plug-in for Movable Type blogs.