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Aside from the MyLocation feature that was added to its Maps Service, Google is also putting Google Maps somewhere else - on location-based search results. Now when you do a search for a location related searches in Google, the first search result will be a map of that location plus some nice photos of that location.

Clicking on those photos or map will bring you to their photo layers on Google Maps where you can find more information about those places, as well as its other photo layers.

While this may be a simple feature, it is however a good way for Google to promote its Google Maps service, which incidentally is getting better with the many features that Google has been introducing to this service.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Google Search Results for Places Now Includes Maps and Photos

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Here’s a new twist on the oft repeated whine of many businesses regarding the use of brand names to trigger online ads. Cosmetics company Mary Kay filed a lawsuit against Yahoo! this week in federal court alleging trademark infringement after they discovered Yahoo was inserting links to unauthorized retailers in personal messages that its sellers send to their consumers.

Prior lawsuits dealing with this issue have mainly revolved around ads in search engines or pop-up ads served by adware companies showing up for certain trademarked keywords.  What sets this case apart is that it is the first time that a company has complained about links in personal emails.  Some lawyers now say that this distinction may help Mary Kay prove that consumers are easily confused by the ads.

Yahoo seems to have begun inserting this kind of in-email ads earlier this year.  Mary Kay became aware of the practice this past spring after some of the company’s consultants and employees tipped them off after noticing them in their emails.

In their filing, Mary Kay argues that the email recipients may “mistakenly believe that the hyperlinks and pop-ups which include ads associated with the Mary Kay marks were affirmatively included or authorized by either Mary Kay or the Independent Beauty Consultant sending the email.”

It sounds like a logical arguement, but it might not be enough.  Some point out that although Mary Kay is complaining about unauthorized resellers, people are still typically permitted to sell products without authorization as long as the products have been lawfully purchased.

It is really going to come down to how the court views this, and it will definitely be an interesting case to monitor.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Mary Kay Sues Yahoo for Trademark Infringement

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GeoCities web hosting has been around since the very early days of the internet and while it’s not widely used anymore, it’s name still arouses a fond memory in the minds of early adopters.  Every once in awhile, a long-dead GeoCities site will even crop up in search results.  Yahoo, the current owner of GeoCities, has decided to finally put the sites and the entire service to rest, announcing that GeoCities will cease to function on October 26, 2009.

Launched in 1994 in the early days of the web, GeoCities offered a great place for aspiring webmasters to launch websites.  What we thought was so cool back then would hardly suffice today with the all of the modern day’s multimedia and interactive aspects of websites eating up the minuscule amounts of storage and bandwidth that GeoCities offered.  It’ll be a sad day nonetheless, as the once popular web host of our youth ceases to exist.

Yahoo purchased the business in the late 1990’s for $3.6, when scrolling HTML marquees were still considered cool (ha!). We’re pretty sure that investment did not pan out, as web designers began to create more dynamic sites and demand on resources increased.  So in a last ditch attempt to squeeze something out of GeoCities, Yahoo is now encouraging those that still use it (does anyone really use it anymore?!) to upgrade to Yahoo! Hosting.

I suppose that after October, if you want to reminisce about the good ol’ GeoCities days, you can take a trip down memory lane and visit archive.org.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Yahoo to Shut Down GeoCities This Fall

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Tumblr, another one of the many free hosted blogging platforms available on the web, announced this week the addition of a fun new feature to their blogs that will certainly interest anyone running a community-driven blog.  The new feature, called “Submissions”,  will allow your readers to submit posts to the blog.

The feature can be enabled from your Tumblr blog’s “Customize” screen, and each blog owner can customize the submissions form.

With more and more sites accepting reader submitted content, the timing couldn’t have been much better. In the sea of look-a-like blog services, this is definitely a feature that stands out.  It shows that the Tumblr people are keeping an eye on new trends, as well as coming up with new innovative ideas.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Tumblr Launches “Submissions” for Community-Driven Blogs

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If you’ve ever used Google Maps on your iPhone or other mobile device, you’re probably familiar with My Location already.  For those that aren’t, when you click a button your exact location is shown on the map denoted by a blue circle.  Now, that nifty little feature is coming to your desktop and laptop computers.

Google announced Thursday the laucnh of My Location for Google Maps, which means that when you visit Google Maps now with a supported web browser, you’ll see the addition of a new button - My Location - in the map’s top left corner.

If Google is able to determine your location accurately enough, it will show your location on the map with a blue circle.  Clicking on the button again will remove the blue circle.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Google Launches My Location for Google Maps

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Unified search is a cool new FireFox addon that lets you easily combine and compare side-by-side search results from a number of search engines.

The tool works as follows:

• Search base service - i.e. Google
• See Bing search engines appear on the same page;
• Notice buttons in the right top corner;
• Click on any button to get the search results from the selected service load instead of Bing;
• Click an arrow sign to get the search results from the selected service load in the new tab.

Google + Delicious:

Google + StumbleUpon:

Google + Bing:

(Note: there are more ways to compare Google and Bing search results)

Supported search engines: Bing, Wolfram, Wikipedia, Delicious, Stumbleupon.

You can easily disable/ enable the addon by clicking its icon in the status bar.

More tools to compare Google search results with other search engines:

• How to Combine Google Search with Twitter Search;
• How To Compare Results on Different Search Engines;
• What Else Would You Like to See on Google Search Results Page?

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Unified Search: Featured FireFox Addon for Search

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Google has just launched a new feature of Image Search which is aimed at helping users find images that are free to use based on their usage licenses, such as Creative Commons, GNU free documentation and other intellectual property agreement. This feature includes searching for images that are free to use, edit and share. Somehow, this gives artists producing these images and making them available on the web a hand in determining how their images can be used by anyone, if in case they will allow so. Artists can specify these conditions through the Creative Commons licenses which they tag to their images prior to making them available online.

The feature can be enabled through the advanced image search page. Users can select the type of license attached to images that they want to search for.

According to the Official Google Blog, while this maybe a safer way of finding reusable images, users must still be cautious when using them. It is still the user’s responsibility to verify whether the licensing information is still valid or applicable to the images to avoid copyright infringement later on.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Google Image Search Now Features License Filter

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Google has announced a minor change to its search results page for some geographic-based queries. To fill in the white space that used to appear next to the small map, Google is now pulling in user-contributed photos from its Panoramio photo-sharing site. (Marketers: This is another reason to start using Panoramio if you’re not already.)
It’s […]

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Facebook allows you to embed fan pages on your own site, which might result in Facebook outranking you for your own brand name. For example, the Search Engine Land fan page has a link for me to “add a fan box to your site.” If you look at the code of that widget, […]

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In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more.
Yahoo Flight Attendants:

Google Street View Car Fleet:

Bing Gay Pride:

Google Gay Pride:

Yahoo Purple Donuts:

Google Lego Corporate Ladder:

Yahoo Reserved […]

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