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Senator Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) is okay with the Google-Yahoo deal, but he wants the DOJ to keep a close eye on the implementation. In a letter to Assistant Attorney General Thomas Barnett, Kohl, Chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust urges:

Recognizing the nascent and fast-changing nature of this marketplace, we encourage the Department to continue to monitor the state of competition in this industry, whatever the outcome of its current investigation. If, over time, you determine that Google is gaining a dominant market position as a result of the Google-Yahoo agreement, then we would encourage the Justice Department to intervene to protect competition. Even should you conclude at present that this deal is not contrary to antitrust law, the Department must be sure that this deal never in the future crosses the line into an unacceptable, anti-competitive collaboration among competitors which will harm consumers and advertisers.

Kohl also acknowledged both the fears of advertisers and the assurances of Yahoo and Google. I think it’s prudent to let the deal go through, but to watch as the program unfolds to see if anti-competitiveness occurs.

What do you think?

h/t Reuters

We here at Incisive Media, home of Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Strategies (SES), are pleased to announce a few promotions within our event programming team.

First off, Stewart Quealy has been promoted to VP of content development. Stew has been programming the Search Engine Strategies events since 2001, most recently as senior conference program director. He will become the senior person responsible for creating conference program content for all events in the group and will be involved in the overall strategic development of our conference business. That includes the SES conferences, webcasts, and training courses.

Marilyn Crafts has been promoted to senior program director. She’s been programming our SES events for the past 8 years. She will continue to work closely with Stewart, Jackie Ortez, and the rest of their team in program development, speaker selection and event strategy.

“Anyone who’s spoken at or attended an SES event has seen the hard work and professionalism of Stewart, Marilyn, and the rest of their team,” said Gary Lynch, managing director of the Interactive Marketing Group in North America for Incisive Media. “We’re happy to be able to recognize and reward that hard work, and continue to produce top-quality events.”

Kevin M. Ryan, who has been serving as VP and global content director for SES, will transition to the role of chairman of the SES Advisory Board. He will continue to have an active and visible presence at our events, and to advise Stewart and his team in their programming efforts.

“A little over a year ago, Kevin took on the assignment to stabilize and build the SES brand during a critical transition phase for the business. A year later our events, including the global SES conference and expo series, are still the dominant brand in the industry with a strong global presence,” Lynch said.

Kevin plans to return to his roots on the agency side of search as CEO and founder of Motivity Marketing, a strategic consulting firm focusing on search and interactive marketing. He will also continue to write his weekly column here at SEW, “Searching For Meaning.”

Since launching a mobile text search service in January, ChaCha has answered 27 million queries, already gaining 7% of the U.S. mobile search market. They tied Yahoo in mobile search market share by the end of June 2008.

ChaCha experienced an 800% growth rate in the second quarter of 2008.

“Mobile search is growing at an incredible pace,” says Chris Quick, mobile media analyst with Nielsen Mobile. “Within the mobile SMS search category, ChaCha is the fastest growing service, increasingly competitive with other mobile search providers. We’re therefore keeping very close tabs on how ChaCha will affect the mobile market.”

Looks like refocusing their business model on mobile text search is working out pretty nicely. I’ve used ChaCha myself, and I find it quite useful. I can text a question, keep going about my day and then get the precise answer I need a few minutes later. It saves me time, because I can get stuff done instead of sifting through a bunch of different search results, which may or may not be relevant.

What do you think of ChaCha’s mobile text search service and growth? Direct your thoughts to the comments section.

Google has made some adjustments to the blue “My Location” circle on the mobile version of its mapping product.

If you’re in a metropolitan area, the circle will be smaller. If you’re in a rural area, the circle will become bigger. The reason behind the change and the sizes has to do with cell tower triangulation.

Google gathers data from cell towers near your phone to determine your location. If you’re in an urban or suburban setting, you’re likely to be close to more towers, giving Google the ability to pinpoint your location more precisely. If you’re out in the boondocks, you have access to fewer or maybe just one tower, so the location is more approximate.

What do you think about the change? Let us know in the comments!

Related Reading:
Google Adds “My Location” Search Feature to Windows Mobile Devices
Google Opens Location-Aware Application to 3rd Party Developers
Google Maps for Mobile Adds Public Transportation Directions

Google AdWords blog announced it will be launching the changes it told us about last month in the next few days.

Still no mention on turning on old accounts when they stop the inactive status, but they have given more details on how the Quality Score is measured including all of the CTRs in your account. This may force people to be a lot tighter with the keywords they add to their accounts so they do not have to pay higher rates for their established terms.

The front page bid estimates that will be replacing minimum bids also have some interesting new details:

For queries without many advertisers competing for placement, the first page bid estimate should be relatively close to your existing minimum bid. However, queries with a high level of advertiser competition may have significantly higher first page bid estimates, because you’ll likely need to bid above the old minimum bid to rank higher than your competition and show on the first page. Remember that you can bid less than your first page bid estimate and still show on subsequent pages — as long as your keyword is relevant to our users.

Advertisers familiar with the competitive landscape for their keywords may indeed notice that the first page bid estimates provided are in line with the CPCs that they had been bidding to appear on the first page prior to the release of these Quality Score improvements, although this is not a given.

Web analytics provider Omniture today launched Omniture SiteSearch, a hosted site search product it picked up in its Visual Sciences acquisition, which closed in January 2008.

The SiteSearch product was an early entry in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) space. It was originally launched in 1999 as Atomz Search, part of its content management suite. Atomz was later acquired by analytics provider WebSideStory, which later acquired Visual Sciences. The entire company changed its name to Visual Sciences, and was then acquired by Omniture.

A few clients, including Verizon and BusinessWeek have been using SiteSearch as a standalone product, according to Jeff Minich, senior product marketing manager at Omniture. Today, it becomes an integrated part of the Omniture online marketing suite.

The biggest effect of this is the ability to impact site search results using data from Omniture’s SiteCatalyst analytics package. So on an e-commerce site, for example, a search for “shirts” could be made to return the most popular shirts of the season, or those that return the highest margin, or those that are converting highest, Minich said.

“You can set business rules to break ties, or to push a page higher in the results,” he said. “You can also combine metrics, and weight them relative to each other, and relative to the natural relevancy ranking in SiteSearch.”

Earlier this week, comScore released the results of a study examining recent changes in consumer attitudes and perceptions about the state of the U.S. economy. The study found that consumers in all income segments are cutting back on spending due to concerns about the economy, and that they were doing so to an even greater extent in July 2008 than in April 2008.

So, what does this mean for search engine marketers?

Many consumers have become increasingly cost conscious and are turning to the Internet for pricing information. The survey findings revealed that nearly three out of four consumers believe the Internet has made it “a lot easier” or “somewhat easier” to find better, more useful pricing information.

In addition, 75 percent of respondents said that they believe the Internet will become an even more important channel for pricing information, with 41 percent of respondents saying it will be “a lot more important” and 34 percent of respondents saying it will be “somewhat more important” in the future.

Do you need some examples to drive this point home?

In New York, Andrew Jeffery of Minyanville.com reports, “It appears the city that never sleeps has finally succumbed to the economic slowdown, and it’s not just the neon “Recession Special” sign outside Gray’s Papaya.”

In San Francisco, Liza Zimmerman of the S.F. Wine & Cocktail Examiner reviews a “Recession special: the Viansa 2007 Dolcetto is another well-executed example of using classic Mediterranean grapes on California soil.”

When Hyundai asked the Complex Blog to review their first Genesis offering touching down in the states, the company best known for econo-boxes “threw Complex the keys and we took this recession special for a ride.”

But wait! There’s more!

Go to the Rates and Registration Details page for SES Chicago 2008. Just like last year, there is an Early Bird Rate that enables you to save $200 if you register before November 21. But, unlike last year, there is also a “Recession Special,” which lets you save $600 if you register before September 26.

And if you want to appear as “sartorially challenged” as one SEM industry observer said “the brains of Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization are,” then turn up at SES Chicago wearing the “Recession Special Shirt” being offered by Ten Deep at Turntablelab.com. According to the review, “Nothing like a nice, timely shirt that reflects things going on in today’s headlines.”

Of course, wearing such a shirt violates the dress code in the SES Speaker Guidelines, which states: “Business casual attire is recommended. Formal business attire is perfectly fine. If in doubt, overdress. You won’t feel out of place, as many speakers will also be in formal attire. How you look has an impact on how well the audience receives your presentation.”

It’s a classic dilemna for marketers: Follow the guidelines or take advantage of today’s headlines. What would I recommend? I’d advise you to jump on the “recession special” to save $600, but skip over the shirt. But, I should disclose that SES is a client. If you want to take more of a fashion risk, that’s a decision that you’ll have to make for yourself.

Recently, Microsoft started putting images as the background design of Live.com. For two glorious weeks, the images were of Olympic events. Now, they’ve switched to politics.

Today’s image is a closeup of Democratic Presidential Nominee Barack Obama at his big acceptance speech last night. But with less than half of those polled supporting Barack Obama, could such an image deter people from using Live.com?

We can say the same thing if/when a McCain picture appears on the site.

It’s not that political events shouldn’t be on Live.com’s site. But perhaps a wider shot of the event would help visitors see the image as a news photo. Plus, with the hot spots that Live.com is using to help visitors explore searches - today’s photo it has 2 boxes on the blurry audience background and one on Obama’s collar. Kind of awkward.

How do you think Microsoft should handle political photos in its new design? Sound off in the comments.

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Google was the recipient of 70.77% of U.S. searches in July 2008, up from 69.17% in June, according to Hitwise. Yahoo and Microsoft continued to drop, at 18.65% and 5.36% respectively. Ask.com dropped month-over-month but gained year-over-year, coming in at 3.53%.

Here’s the breakdown of niche traffic: