Federal officers indicted John "Junior" Gotti on charges of racketeering, murder, and drug trafficking today. Once word of the arrest?broke online, searchers turned out in droves to e-gawk at the alleged mafia lord and various members of his extended clan. Demand for " john gotti jr arrest " and " john gotti " vaulted upwards, while interest in " gambino crime family " and " gotti family " charted a fast and furious rise.

Search Engine Land noticed that Google now shows a onebox* for certain Olympics-related queries, like tennis olympics or taekwondo olympics . This seems to work in the US and China but not, for instance, using normal google.com results from Germany. In the onebox, you'll see an icon alongside the upcoming events for the sports category, linked to Beijing2008.cn. *A onebox is a special result integrated into organic Google results.

Hi again, I'm Jim Hunt, senior director of PayPal merchant services.? Tomorrow's webinar, the first in our weekly series, is entitled "Capturing the voice of your customer to drive ROI". This topic is particularly interesting because leading online retailers are evolving the ways in which they reach and communicate with .

by Stacy Williams One of the great benefits of search engine marketing is that it's more measurable than most other forms of advertising and marketing. Search marketers are able to see exactly how many conversions (online leads or sales) they've driven, along with revenue generated and ROI. It's every marketer's dream! But are we missing half the picture by focusing on conversions? Just because we can easily measure conversions,

Are you still flipping through a three-inch thick book of yellow paper when you need a phone number? It's time to ditch that hefty phone book and turn to a better resource. The new AOL Yellow Pages combines access to phone numbers with all the best of AOL's resources. With AOL Yellow Pages, you can find phone numbers, addresses, and the best services in your area just by searching. Every search result will bring you a detailed business page,

Schadenfreude ??" it's a scary sounding German phrase that means taking pleasure in other's bad fortune. When it comes to Yahoo there's been an awful lot of that going around and I too haven't been immune. The bad fortune certainly exists. Yahoo has been struggling to maintain their share of the search engine market against big dog Google and upstarts like Live.

Technorati is bringing you that much closer to attending Web 2.0 Expo NYC next month ??" we've got free tickets to give away! As a media sponsor for the event, Technorati has complimentary promotional tickets for the conference taking place Sept. 16-19 at the Javits Center in NYC. For your chance to snag a ticket, email WebExNY@technorati.com by August 12, 2008. You'll be entered into the drawing, and notified by August 14. Good luck!

There are resignation letters, Dear John letters, thank you letters... but was the White House behind an Iraqi intelligence official's fake letter to Saddam Hussein that linked the former Iraqi leader, the 9/11 hijackers, and weapons of mass destruction? Radar Online explains that the 2003 letter is " old news ," and was quickly sussed out as a forgery.

Hi everyone, I'm Don Fotsch, Vice President of User Experience and Design at PayPal. ?As a father of six children, ages 7-18, I know that back-to-school season can be a stressful time for both parents and students. Whether you're looking for this season's hottest new laptop or struggling to find .

A question in the forums for adCenter API today asked whether the update deadline for customers to move their code from using version 4 to using version 5.1 was changing. The deadline is not changing. The deadline is the same as previously announced: August 14th. Our team has provided e-mail and telephone communications in addition to the regular webcasts. We are aware that many customers plan to make the update as the deadline approached. If that has been your plan,