Weekly Rap-up of Search Engine Industry News – 7/16 – 7/20

A summary of search related news items that occurred this week including Answers.com buys Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com and Reference.com for $100 million, Google launches Custom Search Engine product for small to medium sized businesses, Google Print Ads comes out of beta and is made available to all AdWords advertisers, Christine Churchill provides insight into potential hazards small businesses could miss with their web sites, and finally, YouTube offers custom video player option.

Monday

• Answers.com Agrees to Buys Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com and Reference.com – Search Engine Journal reports that Answers.com has agreed to acquire Lexico Publishing Group, owner of Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com and Reference.com, for $100 million in cash. Answers.com sees an excellent loyalty building opportunity from these users of Lexico properties, along with enhanced monetization via contextual, display and search advertising.

Tuesday

• Google Launches Custom Search for Small Businesses - Search Engine Land reports that Google has announced a beefed-up version of Google Custom Search, a site search product aimed at small and medium sized businesses. The new service is hosted by Google and offers all of the same functionality of the free Google Custom Search product, with a few key differences including, customized search results, optional ads, dedicated enterprise support and optional Google branding. pricing begins at starts $100 a year for searching up to 5,000 pages and extends to $500 for 50,000 pages. Learn more at the Google Custom Search Engine page.

Wednesday

• Google Print Ads Available To All AdWords Advertisers - Search Engine Guide reports that after two years of testing, Google’s print ad program has left beta and now allows AdWords advertisers to place ads in more than 200 newspapers across the United States. They began their test for a small group of advertisers last November with just over 50 newspaper partners, including The Washington Post and The New York Times. As of yesterday, the Google Print Ads system to all AdWords users. Jennifer Laycock has more details including screen shots at Search Engine Guide.

Thursday

• Small Businesses Need To Keep a Close Eye on Their Web Sites - Christine Churchill has written an article to help bring awareness to small business owners of potential hazards regarding their web sites that they need to keep a close eye on if they want to succeed in online business. Some of those items include making sure your domain name registration doesn’t expire without your knowledge (have seen that happen tot many clients), your SSL certificate has expired and is scaring away potential buyers, your CMS is limiting search engine visibility, your server can’t handle the traffic it is receiving, and your site doesn’t function properly in Firefox. Check out article in its entirety and see if you are missing the boat on these and additional tips she provides.

Friday

• YouTube Offers Custom Video Player - TechCrunch reports that YouTube has launched a new “custom player” feature that allows users customize player features including the name of the player, color theme, layout (a standard layout or one with related videos to the right), and content. The content feature allows users to include their own videos, other videos from a YouTube Favorites List or YouTube play list.