Weekly Rap-up of Search Engine Industry News – 4/16 – 4/20

A summary of search related news items that occurred this week including Google reaches deal to sell radio ads on Clear Channel, Yahoo sponsored ads now carry check out icons for merchants who offer PayPal payment processing, Google add “PowerPoint” like presentation software to Google Docs, MySpace news officially launches, and finally Rebecca Kelly from SEOmoz once again provides a recap of a Search Engine Strategies conference in comic strip format.

Monday

• Google To Sell Radio Ads on Clear Channel - The New York Times is reporting that Google will begin selling advertisements across all of the stations of Clear Channel Communications, the No. 1 radio station owner in the United States, at the end of June. The deal is set to run for five years and gives Google access to just under 5% of Clear Channel’s commercial time. That includes 30-second spots on all of Clear Channel’s 675 stations during all programs and all times of the day. If you recall, Google recently started selling ads for the 125 national satellite channels on EchoStar Communications’ DISH Network. They have also been busy testing ad sales for papers like The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times and newspaper chains.

Tuesday

• Yahoo Sponsored Ads Offer Checkout Icons for Merchants Accepting PayPal - Chris Sherman reports at Search Engine Land that Yahoo and PayPal have announced that Yahoo Sponsored Search results will feature a blue shopping cart icon linking to merchants that accept PayPal Express Checkout as a method of payment. When asked how the Yahoo/PayPal checkout differed from Google’s checkout program the reply was that functionality is very similar however it was pointed out that PayPal has more than 100 million existing customers, far more than the number of advertisers using Google checkout.

Wednesday

• Google Adds Presentation Software to Google Docs – Another competing product to Microsoft’s Office? Maybe. Reuters announces that Google is adding presentation software Google Docs, a suite of free software that already includes word-processing, spreadsheets, e-mail and home page publishing applications. Google CEO, Eric Schmidt played down the direct challenge to Microsoft when asked whether the move was meant to compete with PowerPoint. “We don’t think so. The reason is it doesn’t have all the functionality nor is it intended to have all the functionality of Microsoft Office.” The question remains what functionality does it not have and is it worth the extra functionality for users to pay for PowerPoint when they can utilize Google’s version for free.

Thursday

• MySpace Launches News Service - TechCrunch reports that MySpace News is set to launch on Thursday at news.myspace.com. MySpace will pull news items from a number of trusted sources via RSS feeds. The tems will then be organized into 25 main categories and 300 sub-categories including sports, politics, style, and technology. The order of the news items will be determined by user voting, taking into account the freshness of the news. Users can vote on each item of news with a ranking of 1-5. Higher ranked and higher voted items will appear at the top of each category. Loren Baker has a piece on how to submit your feeds to be considered for inclusion at Search Engine Journal. I just submitted mine so we will see if MySpace news send any referral traffic.

Friday

• SES New York 2007 in Comic Strip Format - Rebecca Kelly’s comic strip creativity comes to life again with “SES New York: The Comic Strip.” It is a humorous recap of the Mozzers trip to SES and the big city that includes tons of pictures of SEO/SEM industry leaders. I made the strip as a beer wielding manic getting ready to accost Cameron Olthuis. It does look like that but reality we must have been talking about how to protect our daughters from playboy, Neil Patel.