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Two Ex-Googlers are part of the management team that recently launched a vertical search engine aimed at lead generation for the real estate rental industry. Dan Daugherty, President and CEO, and Tim Moynihan, COO, lead rentBits.com and RentMarketer.com. Both execs worked for Google operations in the Mountain states region.

RentBits.com hopes to develop the most comprehensive index of available rental properties, a niche overlooked by Zillow but currently owned by Craigslist.

RentMarketer.com offers property managers a technology platform to publish their listings on more than 60 rental classifieds websites. The distribution network claims to have the potential to reach about 9.3 million people. The software platform includes free phone and email tracking plus a click-to-call feature.

rentBits.com hopes to carve out its niche among the growing number of vertical search engines. As Google fights Web spam to maintain relevant results, Web 2.0 vertical search engines are popping up in the financial services, legal services and travel industries.

Earlier this month, Virgin Charter announced the launch of a high-end corporate travel search engine. Last month saw the launch of the world’s largest legal search engine, the Public Library of Law.

Want a snapshot of the day’s search marketing news? Here we’ve collected today’s top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

• Yahoo Layoffs Top 1,000 Employees in U.S.
  Yahoo layoffs may top 1,000 employees before the U.S. mass layoff ends.
• Largest Legal Vertical Search Engine Launches: Public Library of Law
  The world’s largest legal vertical search engine launched today in a partnership with legal research provider Fastcase.
• Doodle 4 Google: Artsy-Craftsy March Madness
  Google pits kindergarteners against high school seniors in a Darwinian graphic arts contest to design a Google logo.
• YouTube Channel launched for SES London 2008
  The television writers strike drove a record number of restive viewers to the Internet in December.
• UK search marketing survey goes live
  Online publisher E-consultancy in conjunction with search agency Neutralize (*\*) are conducting follow up research to last year’s UK Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Report.
• SEW Experts: Landing Page Optimization Defined for SEM
  Search marketers need to be concerned about landing page optimization because it can multiply the impact of your search marketing campaigns.
• SEW Experts: The Search Monopoly Transforms
  Google, Yahoo, and MSN have been going at it like cats and dogs in the press. Much of the hype surrounding the three tech powerhouses coming together in the United States centers around a monopoly discussion.

Click to read the rest of this post…

The world’s largest legal vertical search engine launched today in a partnership with legal research provider Fastcase, Inc. Public Library of Law (pLoL) may be more of a directory than a search engine, even though Fastcase CEO Ed Walters says it makes”first-time legal research as easy as using Google.”

That’s what Yahoo and Microsoft said and look where it got them.

The PLol.org site indexes cases from the U.S. Supreme Court, Courts of Appeals and all 50 states (back to 1997); federal statutory law and codes from all 50 states; and regulations, court rules, and constitutions.

More than 2 million pages of cases previously available only by subscription make PLoL the largest free legal search engine online.

Last November, a Fastcase deal with PublicResource.org made 1.8 million pages of federal cases available in the public domain. Fastcase now boasts what it calls “free links to paid content.” Now there’s an original idea — make blue links free!

While domains are at a premium these days, the combination of “LOL,” “dot org,” and “p” as in public cries out for brand rehab.

Google and Yahoo tried to help Fastcase sell legal docs to the general public via search back in September 2006. Fastcase powered “premium legal search” in Google and Yahoo by making their extensive law library – previously only accessible on a subscription basis – available for $4.99 per case.

We’d ask Fastcase the Dr. Phil question (”So how’s that workin’ out for ya?”) but the answer arrived today.