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In the Search Engine Watch forums, user searchengineman (Does he wear a cape? I hope so!) noticed a change to his AdWords statistics. Now, he could check separate statistics for ads on the content network and ads via search.

So how did he feel about it?

In the words of a famous Etta James song, searchengineman wrote, “At last.”

Check it for yourself. There’s a new Statistics drop down menu, which lets you change your view to see content and search network stats in separate rows.

The AdWords team says, “By separating the statistics by network on your summary pages, you can not only see which campaigns or ad groups need your attention, but you can also identify which network you need to optimize for.”

What do you think of the separation? Is this a welcome update? Let us know in the comments - or head over to the forums to join the conversation.

The Internet Marketers of Delaware Vally (IM_DV) have organized an unconference as they are calling it on their website. But in reality, they have rounded up an impressive group of speakers and are offering attendance for only $21 for the 2 day event.

Our own Kevin Ryan will be speaking, along with many other well known names in our space. Li Evans, Kim Krause Berg, Greg Meyers, Debbie Weil, Geoff Livingston and Will Reynolds are just some of the featured speakers.

The event is being done in conjunction with PodCamp so there are many areas to pick up tips and learn. The sessions have been broken into Beginner, Intermediate and two Advanced programs with 40 sessions to choice from over the 2 days.

So if you are in the area I would suggest stopping by. Hey where else can you get a great cheese steak and a 2 day conference for under $30!

At noon in Mountain View, Google will announce the launch of face recognition software in their latest version of Picasa, according to Cnet.com.

The software will help people tag names to their photographs - handy for that odd face in a group shot you are not sure of. Now I wonder how long it will be before one of the crime shows makes use of it in the field when they do not have access to their lab!

Hey it may not have access to police records yet… but knowing Google a collaboration no doubt will eventually come. Versions for small police departments would make sense and further ingrain the brand.

A California federal court judge, Judge Howard Lloyd, has thrown out a copyright infringement suit against online video site Veoh. The suit was brought by adult entertainment company IO Group.

The judge’s reasoning was that Veoh is protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s (DMCA) safe harbor provisions. Since Veoh takes quick action in light of copyright issues, they are not acting illegally.

“Veoh has a strong DMCA policy, takes active steps to limit incidents of infringement on its website and works diligently to keep unauthorized works off its site,” wrote Judge Lloyd.

Guess who loves this ruling? Google. It’s currently facing its own copyright infrigement suit brought against YouTube by Viacom. Because the Veoh case was heard in California, it doesn’t set precedent for the YouTube case in New York. But Google hopes the Veoh ruling is still influential.

via NYT

Over the past few days, more and more articles and posts from SES San Jose 2008 have been written. I’m sure there will be more stories to come out of the event, but this seems like a good time to recap the conference.

A quick Google News search for “SES San Jose” finds 276 articles from the past month – 138 when the duplicates are removed. A search in Yahoo! News for “SES San Jose” finds 114 articles from the past month. A query in Google Blog Search for “SES San Jose” finds 5,554 blog posts that mention “SES San Jose” from the past month, 337 when the duplicates are removed.

A little content analysis reveals the top 10 stories from the past month that were triggered by a keynote, panel, session or workshop at the 10th annual SES confence. Seven of these stories were ones that I predicted in my post on the Search Engine Watch Blog entitled “SES San Jose tip sheet for bloggers and journalists.” But three of the top stories came as surprises — even to an SES veteran like myself. Here, in order, are the Big Ten.

Kevin Ryan, VP, Global Content Director, SES & Search Engine Watch. (Twenty-three articles and 72 unduplicated blog posts, including “SES San Jose Photos – Paparazzi Style” by Lee Odden of TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog.

Tuesday Morning Keynote by Satya Nadella, SVP, Search, Portal & Advertising Platform Group, Microsoft. (Nineteen articles and 69 unduplicated blog posts, including “Is Microsoft’s Vision of Search Enough to Catch Google?” by Rob Hof of BusinessWeek. Rob wrote, “It would be dangerous for anyone to write off Microsoft. Its determination was on display today at the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose. Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s senior VP of search, portal, and advertising platform group, told the crowd that he sees searchers moving from merely typing keywords into Google to getting tasks done.”

Matt Cutts, Software Engineer Guru of Google. (Ten articles, 74 blog posts and a YouTube video entitled “Matt Cutts on Big Brand BlackHat Sites” on the ChrisDaviesCa Channel. Chris happened to be sitting next to Matt, Google’s head of webspam, when Matt weighed in about big brand sites that have been banned for black hat seo practices during the Black Hat/White Hat session during SES San Jose 2008.

Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief of Search Engine Land. (Eleven articles, 41 unduplicated blog posts and a video interview by Mike McDonald of the WebProNews Video Blog entitled, “SES: Staying Focused On Search.”) Danny said that social marketing and all sorts of other things can be useful, but it’s important to get back to the search marketing basics.

Universal & Blended Search. (Four articles, 42 unduplicated blog posts and a video interview for the SESConferenceExpo channel entitled, “Johanna Wright of Google on Google Universal Search.” Johanna gives some insight into how vertical search results are blended into universal search results and advocates a thoughtful approach to making information accessible to Google through use of sitemaps and detailed descriptions.

Keynote Roundtable: Why Does Search Get the Credit for Everything? (Four articles and 38 blog posts, including “SES roundtable: Search shouldn’t take all the credit” by Ellen Keohane of DM News. Ellen wrote, “Search marketing often gets credit for the final sale or conversion, even when it shouldn’t, according to a roundtable discussion today at Search Engine Strategies in San Jose.”

Opening Keynote Presentation by Lee Siegel, author of Against the Machine. (Two articles and 27 unduplicated blog posts, including “Trust: The Backbone of Consumer Satisfaction” by Kevin Lee of ClickZ.) Kevin wrote, “In an afternoon keynote, Lee Siegel, author of “Against the Machine,” predicted a backlash against the Internet as it has evolved. His book (which I’ve partially read) discusses how there are unforeseen consequences due to technology, and the Internet is responsible for largely unforeseen positive and negative effects on individuals and society.”

Thursday Morning Keynote: Dan Heath, author of Made to Stick. (One article and 27 unduplicated blog posts, including “Dan Heath 2008 SES San Jose Keynote” on WebmasterRadio.FM.) Listen to Dan explain Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die as he delivers his 2008 SES San Jose Keynote. Dan offers six key factors for sticky ideas, plus offers numerous supporting examples.

Orion Panel: How Much Search is Enough? (Three articles and 19 unduplicated blog posts, including “SES San Jose 2008 - Where’s Money For Search Going?” by Manoj Jasra of WebProNews. Manoj wrote, “How much Search is enough? Aaron Goldman of Resolution Media, Steven Kaufman of Digitas, Robert Murray of iProspect and Bob Tripathi of Discover Financial Services were posed that very question by SES’s own, Kevin Ryan.”

Orion Panel: Technical & Information Giants. (Six articles and 15 unduplicated blog posts, including “Technical & Information Giants Keynote - SES San Jose 2008” by Jason McElweenie of The SEM Blog. Jason wrote, “WOW. Let me repeat that. WOW….This was a great panel of some very huge icons on the web today. Bravo SES!”

Broadband subscriptions dropped 51% since last year, according to data released by Leichtman Research Group. Only 887,000 subscribers were added to a group of companies comprising 94% of the market. Cable companies accounted for 670,000 of those additional subscriptions.

The numbers also seem to support research from the University of Minnesota suggesting that internet traffic growth claims by the cable companies and other internet service providers are largely overblown.

There are now 65.1 million broadband subscriptions among this group of companies. Cable enjoys 35.1 million of the subscriptions, while the phone companies have over 29.7 million of them.

Here’s the breakdown among the top cable and phone companies:

Related Reading:
Vote on Proposed FCC Free Broadband Plan Delayed
Uncle Sam Says: Thumbs Down on Net Neutrality
Time Warner to Split AOL Media and Access Divisions
Google Explains its Wireless Dreams
Comcast Playing Hardball with Google?

Ask.com parent company IAC announced last November that they would spin off four of their properties and become 5 separate companies. The other four companies will be HSN, Inc., Interval Leisure Group, Inc., Ticketmaster and Tree.com, Inc.

Now, Reuters is reporting the split will occur on August 21.

Meanwhile, the NASDAQ has advised IAC that ‘when-issued’ trading will begin for the five companies tomorrow at the opening bell. NASDAQ defines ‘when-issued’ trading as this:

“A trade is done on a “when-issued” basis because there are no physical certificates available evidencing the securities being traded, therefore a delivery date cannot be determined at the time of execution.”

IAC recently posted a 7% growth for the second quarter of 2008.

In 2007, 3.8 billion searches were conducted on yellow pages sites as well as the local listings they provide to search engines such as Google, Yahoo and others. So what are the most popular things being searched for? I’m not going to beat around the bush. Here they are:

1. Restaurants
2. Physicians & Surgeons
3. Hotels
4. Auto Repairing & Service
5. Florists-Retail
6. Auto Dealers-New & Used
7. Dentists
8. Auto Parts & Supplies - New & Used
9. Beauty Salons (tie)
10. Hospitals (tie)

This list was put out by the Yellow Pages Association. The data was collected by Knowledge Networks/SRI.

Want a little insight into yellow pages demographics?

• 63% are female
• 89% are aged 25-64
• 54% are college graduates
• 42% have lived at the same address for 10+ years

Related Reading:
Yellow Pages and Search
Q&A with Darby Sieben of the Yellow Pages Group
Yellow Pages Beat Other Local Media in Online Sales in 2007

Earlier, I wrote about the estimates for location-based social networking to reach $3.3 billion in revenues by 2013. The iPhone is leading the way with several new location-based social networks developed by third parties for the new iPhone 2.0 software.

Here are 7 social networking apps that use location-based technology:

Twinkle is a Twitter app that incorporates a location-based feature. Not only can you view your usual Tweets from the people you’re following, but you can also view Tweets from people nearby who you might not already be following. They’re kept on a separate tab, so you don’t have to worry about them getting mixed in with your established following.

Twittervision lets you see Tweets from all over the world.

Zintin simply lets you interact with people nearby. It has “walls” like Facebook, and you can scribble on the photos of your friends.

iFob is designed to help users find other members nearby, and by nearby, they mean people in the same coffeeshop as you. iFob has an app for Windows and is working on an app for Mac OS X.

WhosHere helps you find people close to you with the same interests.

Loopt lets you find out where your friends are and what they’re up to at that location.

Limbo also lets you find where your friends are, but also has a group chat feature.

What do you think of location-based social networking? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Related Reading:
24 iPhone Applications That Accelerate Mobile Search

Microsoft’s recently acquired Navic Networks has announced a new partnership with Mediabrands, a new group of four companies: Initiative, Universal McCann, MAGNA and IPG’s Emerging Media Lab. The media companies will have access to Navic’s Admira, a national media planning tool that includes audience behavior data and real-time viewership reporting.

“We are seeking new technologies to deliver unparalleled accountability to clients, and aligning with Navic was a natural fit,” said Nick Brien, CEO of Mediabrands. “By combining the power of television with the accountability of the Web, we’re able to offer our world-class clients cutting-edge technology to help them maximize the ROI for their advertising dollars.”

“Navic is fully committed to offering innovative technologies that provide one of the most effective and accurate metrics available,” said Chet Kanojia, CEO of Navic Networks. “The industry has come a long way from defining keywords for targeted clicks, and we’re excited to align with forward-thinking companies that make bold moves and, like Navic, are on the cusp of new trends and technologies.”