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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:

• We May Not Want Standards But FTC May Give Us Some
  The standards debate may be in full swing in our industry - but the decisions may be soon taken out of our hands if the FTC continues to define allowable advertising practices.
• Yahoo Execs Bad Mouthing AOL!
  Guess Yahoo does not want to partner with anyone these days… well apart from their biggest competitor Google.
• AdWords Launches New Conversion Tracking Tool
  A new update to AdWords tracking has been reported by the guys over at AccuraCast. Seems they have improved the conversion tracking allowing users to separate different things to track to conversion.
• As Wifi expands, local and mobile search continue to emerge
  Lately, there have been a swarm of announcements regarding Wifi coming to some previously unconnected spots. So what does this mean for Search Engine Marketers?
• Microsoft Updates Live Maps and Virtual Earth 3D
  Microsoft has announced 11 major updates to their Live Maps and Virtual Earth 3D.
• Trellian Acquires Addme.com
  Trellian, the company behind SEO Toolkit and Keyword Discovery, has announced its acquisition of SEO tools provider Addme.com.
• SEW Experts: Standards? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Standards!
  We don’t need SEO standards to define our operation for us; we simply need to hold ourselves to a higher standard of business.
• SEW Experts: SEM Tools of the Experts
  There are a variety of SEM tools available to search marketers. You should be able to find something to fit every need, and every style.
• SEW Experts: Think Universal, Act Local
  Much of the discussion around Universal search, or blended search, focuses on video and images. But local search may be a more important factor; one that has the greatest impact in blended search results.

Click to read the rest of this post…

Here’s a story I missed when it broke. On March 25, Microsoft was awarded a patent it applied for nearly 4 years ago, to fight search spam based on external elements, like “electronic documents,” or email. The prevailing theory is that similar indicators will show up in spammy emails and spammy blog comments and other SEO spam.

Given the resurgence of spam from SEO companies, Microsoft may also want to use the spam filters built into Outlook to highlight potential SEO spammers, working on the theory that spammers are spammers, in any and all fields. No question that this approach may be susceptible to some level of abuse, but given the amount of people using Office, it’s unlikely that subscribing your competitor’s newsletter and then tagging it as spam will really affect them. SeoByTheSea wants to take it even further, and suggests that the URLs in spam emails get tagged as SEO spam as well.

But before we get all that excited about what direction Microsoft (or MicroHoo) can take this innovation, we need to remember how poorly Microsoft has used this to deal with SEO spam in the past 4 years. A Google or MSN group with any keyword in the title will still rise, almost automatically, to the top of Live.com SERPs, regardless of its relevance. Let Microsoft fix that loophole first, and then go after email/SEO spam convergence.

SEMPO has announced officers for its recently elected Board of Directors. The association also revealed a change in the amount of time board members serve. While previous boards served for 1 year, the new board will serve for 2 years. Officers will still serve 1 year terms and next year’s officers will be chosen from this broader gang of 13.

Dana Todd replaced Gord Hotchkiss as Chairperson, while Jeffrey Pruitt continues in his position as President. Dave Fall moved from Treasurer to VP while Ron Jones moves into the role of Treasurer. Chris Boggs is staying put as Secretary.

The 2008 officers are:
Dana Todd, Newsforce - Chairperson
Jeffrey Pruitt, President, iCrossing - President
Dave Fall, DoubleClick, Inc. - Vice President
Ron Jones, Symetri Internet Marketing - Treasurer
Chris Boggs, eMergent Marketing – Secretary

The 2008-2009 Board Members:

Jessica Bowman, In-house SEO Consultant
Massimo Burgio, Global Search Interactive
Bruce Clay, Bruce Clay, Inc.
Duane Forrester, Microsoft
Sara Holoubek, Free Agent Consultant
Gord Hotchkiss, Enquiro Search Solutions, Inc.
Bill Hunt, Global Strategies International
Kevin Lee, Didit

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SES Chicago returns, and WebProNews is on hand to bring you reports and videos from the Windy City. Enjoy our coverage this week.
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We are pleased to announce that we have added a few pages of video collections.  We will be looking into adding more of these if they are something you like - please be sure to contact us or add your comments to this post.  Check out the Wordpress Videos and the SEO Videos we have [...]