While I couldn’t fully capture every quote from the panel I moderated at MediaPost’s Search Insider Summit this week, here’s a rough rundown.

The panel was Search as We See It, “Search Insiders’ view of the Future: Industry Trends, Challenges and things to keep an eye on.” The panelists included:

• Ron Belanger, VP, Worldwide Agency Sales, Omniture
• Daniel Boberg, VP, Advertiser & Agency Professional Services, Yahoo
• Brian Boland, Director, Media Auctions, Microsoft Advertising
• John Nicoletti, Head of Agency Operations, Google

Q: What was different compared to the Search Insider Summit in May 2008?

Everyone mentioned the economy to some extent, often to the full extent. Ron said profit optimization was big, as was customer retention. Yahoo mentioned that the economy has led to declines in click-through rates for commercial times, and lower order sizes. John noted economic issues, brought up the expanded use of universal search, and plugged Google Flu Trends (the only swine flu reference I recall hearing at the events.

Read the full article »

Yesterday, Yahoo launched Sideline, an Adobe AIR app that monitors and manages Twitter buzz. The easy-to-use dashboard includes an overall summary of trending topics, updated in real time, in addition to an organizational platform that lets users create and maintain search groups. Each group can include several different search terms, based on verbiage, hashtag and even sentiment.

Other Sideline features include comment buttons adjacent to each tweet that automatically initiate an @reply to the author when clicked, as well as a favorites tab for storing memorable tweets. Read the full article

Bryan Wiener, CEO of 360i, is featured in today’s New York Times discussing Google and Yahoo’s recently announced search advertising pact:

New York Times
Ad Accord for Yahoo and Google

By Miguel Helft
SAN FRANCISCO — Microsoft’s four-month-long courtship of Yahoo has finally thrown Yahoo into the arms of their biggest common rival, Google.

Google and Yahoo said Thursday that they had reached an agreement under which Google would deliver ads next to some of Yahoo’s search results and on some of its Web sites in the United States and Canada.

The nonexclusive deal is aimed at giving a lift to Yahoo’s finances, and the company said it would generate an additional $250 million to $450 million in operating cash flow in the first year.

The agreement will also strengthen Google’s dominance over the lucrative search advertising market. Read complete article…

How can you go wrong with offering your customers new ways to customize their experience? Once again, a Web giant is learning that customization isn’t a panacea.

Earlier this week, in my last Search Insider for the time being, I reviewed the challenges Yahoo will face with its new SearchMonkey program, in which publishers create enhanced search listings that users can incorporate into their results. SearchMonkey is currently difficult to use, Yahoo users won’t see enough of a payoff, and Google hit a dead end with its related Co-op offering. How can Yahoo struggle so much with customization when it’s such an important part of consumers’ evolving media experience?

To find some answers, let’s contrast SearchMonkey with some examples of where customization works online. (more…)

Yahoo SearchMonkey is finally here. It’s one of the most important developments affecting search engine optimization, and one that can vastly improve the search experience for users. It could be the most significant, revolutionary, unique search development this year. Yet in its current form, hardly anyone will use it.

In another entry in Yahoo’s “God bless ‘em for trying” files (which reside right next to Ask.com’s “Don’t you remember we were the first to do that?” folder), Yahoo’s on to a great idea with SearchMonkey. Here’s how it works: