In addition to today’s Internet Marketing Monitor coverage, we felt these stories were worth pulling out of the multitude of news items for August 29, 2007:

Search Radar Adds Suggestions to Search Results [Read/WriteWeb]

If all of the built in suggestions that search engines are offering these days aren’t enough, a small browser plugin called Search Radar might be what you’re looking for. But I doubt it. I’ve been using it all day and it doesn’t really offer anything that the search engines themselves aren’t doing. The suggestions appear above sponsored results in both Google and Yahoo. In fact, if you have sponsored results blocked or filtered out, Search Radar won’t show up (in Google, at least). Like I said… I can’t tell much of a difference between Search Radar’s suggestions and the ones offered directly from Google and Yahoo. But it can’t hurt to give it a try and see for yourself.

Pages Dropping Out of the Google.com Search Index [Search Engine Roundtable]

WebmasterWorld members are wondering if something is up at Google. Dozens of site owners are reporting fewer indexed pages (by way of the site: command). I’ve noticed the same thing myself. My personal site has not only lost pages, but has been shifting around in rankings much more than usual. I’ve also noticed a drop in results using Google Blog Search as well. Whereas all of my personal site’s pages used to show up in Google Blog Search, more than a few have recently disappeared. Is something officially up? Or is this a glitch of some kind? What do you think?

Yahoo on Using Exceptional Changes in Snapshots of the Web to Ban, Penalize, or Flag Websites [SEO by the Sea]

Yahoo! has filed a patent that talks about using big changes in a website as a way to flag them as possibly trying to “artificially inflate” search rank. In a nutshell, Yahoo!’s idea is to use a previous “snapshot” of a site as a guide to determine when big changes have been made. If, for example, Yahoo! stops by on Monday, they’ll take a snapshot of your site. When they come back next week, Yahoo! will use the snapshot taken on Monday to determine what’s changed. If you’ve added 2000 pages since then, your site could get flagged as potentially trying to game the search engine. Any number of things could then happen: Yahoo! could drop the page from ranking… drop the rank of referenced pages… or flag the page for human inspection. As pointed out at SEO by the Sea, most of us have assumed this kind of thing was going on already. I guess we don’t have to assume any more ;)

George Reyes To Retire As Google CFO [Google Press Release]

Google’s top financial officer is stepping down. No replacement has been named yet but Reyes has agreed to stay on to help in the search for his replacement. So if you need a new job managing billions and billions of dollars… drop your resume off at Google. Just make sure you’ve got a degree from Stanford, first.

New YouTube API Released into the Wild! [YouTube API Blog]

The old YouTube API is out and the new one is in. So what’s different? The new API is based on the Google data protocol that most of the company’s APIs use. Lots of new features and abilities have been added with the updated API, including the ability to pull video responses, full comment lists, related videos as well as greatly improved filtering and sorting. If you’ve been waiting for better APIs to tap into YouTube, now’s your chance!

Have a great Wednesday night folks!