Weekly Rap-up of Search Engine Industry News – 1/14 – 1/18

A summary of search related news items that occurred this week including Google disables IncrediMail’s AdSense account and stock drops over 45%, wireless spectrum bidders approved and auction will begin on January 24th, popular Internet marketing social news site Sphinn to add ‘bury’ or ‘DeSphinn’ function so users can vote down stories, China closes in on the United States as far as number of Internet users they have, and finally, Microsoft expands their adCenter content network to include non-Microsoft properties.

Monday

• Google Disables IncrediMail’s AdSense Account – IncrediMail, a company that develops software to customize e-mails, has had their Google AdSense account banned. As a result, their stock has dropped over 45%. Reuters reports that Google recently barred advertisements to search result pages displayed through IncrediMail’s account and its AdSense account has been disabled. The Israeli-based company said it was clarifying the matter with the Web search giant, and exploring alternative relationships with Google and other vendors.

Tuesday

• Wireless Spectrum Bidders Approved, Auction Stars January 24 – From Search Engine Land, The US Federal Communications Commission has approved 214 “qualified bidders” for the forthcoming 700MHz wireless spectrum auction. Wireless carriers plan to use the spectrum to offer more high-speed data services, such as video and music downloads. Among the bidders are Google and wireless carriers AT&T, Verizon, and MetroPCS. According to the rules established by the FCC, if at least $4.6 billion is bid, “open access” requirements will apply to a third of the roughly 1,200 spectrum licenses. In other words the winning bidder would be legally required to allow access to third parties, unlike today’s practice.

Wednesday

• Sphinn To Add Bury or ‘DeSphinn’ Button - Sphinn, the popular Internet marketing social news forum is proposing adding a “DeSphinn” button that would operate much in the same way that the “Bury” button does at Digg. Now this is not to be confused with the “Report as Spam” link which is to report blatant spam. Rather it gives users to options of voting down a story that possibly they don’t feel deserves to be as popular as it is. The current proposal suggests that when you vote something down, you need to give your reasons why and the information will be public. Some agree that this is a good feature to add while others feel it can polarize the community and cause animosity. i imagine once they feel they have obtained enough comments, they will implement the DeSphinn function.

Thursday

• China Close to Passing United States in Number of Internet Users - TechCrunch reports that new statistics released by the Chinese Government show that China is due to surpass the United States as the nation with the most internet users in the coming months. The China Internet Network Information Center said that China’s total number of Internet users rose 53% to 210 million at the end of 2007 up from 137 million at the end of 2006 and 162 million in June 2007. According to the Wall Street Journal, China is now just five million users shy of surpassing the United States as the world’s largest Internet market.

Friday

• Microsoft Expands Its adCenter Content Network - From Search Engine Watch, there are signs that Microsoft is opening up their content network to include high-quality publishers such as financial data provider EDGAR Online for example. Launched with little fanfare late last year, Microsoft’s adCenter Content Network initially only included Microsoft web properties. Microsoft executives have been quoted in the past as to say that they were planning to build their Content Network slowly and selectively, to ensure publishers were high-quality so that advertisers would achieve better ROI than they now do on Google and Yahoo’s Content networks. It now appears that the process to expand the network has begun.