One of the most interesting stories this week is Yahoo! Search Marketing’s attempts at explaining their new pay per click advertising strategy. You can find the links below.

In short: YSM is actively tweaking the pay per click campaigns of their customers without asking them for permission. Yepp, that is right: They are adding new keyword phrases and new ads for their customers.

This is a PR disaster, and that at a time where confidence in Yahoo! is at an all time low.

Instead of doing all they can to turn Yahoo! Search Marketing into a product that can compete with Google Adwords, they are luring customers into paying for ads they haven’t asked for.

New CEO Carol Bartz has to stop this before the Yahoo Search Marketing team does irreparable damage to the brand.

In other news:

• Google Earth reveals two-acre field of weed to Swiss police

  Police in Switzerland managed to discover a two-acre field of marijuana while using Google Earth as part of an investigation. (ars technica Jan 29 2009)

• Google Unveils Plan To Reveal Internet Blockers

  On Wednesday, Google Inc announced a plan to allow Internet users to determine whether providers are intentionally slowing their network. (redorbit Jan 29 2009)

• Big Newspaper Says, Google Kills Bambie’s Mother

  The search giant has confessed that, while its truck was driving around taking images for Google Street View, it had a collision with a deer in New York state. (Beyond Search Jan 31 2009)

• FindAnyFilm Search Engine

  The UK Film Council has launched a search engine that focuses specifically on film. (Beyond Search Jan 30 2009)

• Search thousands of academic video lectures

  Academic Earth has the goal of giving everyone on earth access to a world-class education. (AltSearchEngines Jan 29 2009)

• Google’s enhanced ‘did you mean?’

  If you try and run a search but the spelling is incorrect rather than just say ‘did you mean?’ and giving you the option of re-running the search Google now shows the top two results from what it thinks that you meant. (Phil Bradley Jan 29 2009)

• Information Trapping: Follow 17 Press Release Wires with Google News

  If I add some ResearchBuzz-relevant keywords and phrases to this list of Google News sources, soon I will have a filtered press release stream coming right to my RSS reader (ResearchBuzz Jan 27 2009)

• China cracking down on dissent

  Chinese government censors are scouring the internet for signs of dissent (The Economist Jan 7 2009)

• Why Google Needs the GDrive to Fight Microsoft

  I believe Google is looking to build something unique, a service that it would position as a direct competitor to not only Microsoft’s SkyDrive and Live Mesh services, but to the software giant’s SharePoint services. (Om Malik Jan 30 2009)

• Yahoo drops its Briefcase

  Yahoo plans to discontinue its Briefcase service, which allows people to store files online for free. (CNet Jan 30 2009)

• Google Finally Confirms Fixing SMS Search

  Google SMS search has been fixed and is working. (SE Roundtable Jan 27 2009)

• Google (Finally) Addresses FeedBurner Problems

  After weeks of reports that FeedBurner wasn’t working, Google finally talked about the situation today on the AdSense for Feeds blog. (SE Land Jan 26 2009)

• Google Confirms Testing Favicons In Search Results

  The favicon only appears when you do a site: command search, and of course, only if Google has chosen you to see the test in action. (SE Land Jan 26 2009)

• Four Things You Need To Know About Google’s Knol

  Google Knol does not receive any sort of boost or advantage in Google’s rankings. (Matt Cutts Jan 25 2009)

• Detecting Googlebombs

  A Googlebomb is a prank where a group of people on the web try to push someone else’s site to rank for a query that it didn’t intend to (Matt Cutts Jan 25 2009)

• Google Grabs Almost All Search Growth; Others Flatline

  The growth charts for US search trends for 2008 presented by Marketing Pilgrim (Jan 29 2009)

• Obama White House Adds Google Exec to Head Social Media Project

  The Obama White House has hired Katie Jacobs Stanton, an ex-Google Project Manager, as the President’s Director of Citizen Participation. (SE Journal Jan 29 2009)

• How to Search for People Across Many Social Networks

  When building a new social connection it is essential to find a new friend across all known social media networks and befriend him everywhere (SE Journal Jan 28 2009)

• Open redirect URLs: Is your site being abused?

  What if there were a way for spammers to take advantage of your site, without ever setting a virtual foot in your server? (Google Webmaster Central Jan 30 2009)

• LeapFish : Instant Search Results as You Type

  Leapfish is an incredibly useful and fast searching tool which assists users to search Google in real time (SE Journal Jan 30 2009)

• Losing Hope With Yahoo, After Watching The Paid Search Division Stumble

  Yahoo is doing tweaks to advertiser accounts — without explicit permission — to generate more money (Danny Sullivan Jan 30)

• Live Search autosuggestions come to Firefox

  The Live Search add-on for Firefox gives you auto-suggestions from Live Search right in the browser while you’re typing your query. (Live Search Jan 29 2009)

• New in Labs: Offline Gmail

  Google tests a tool that lets you use Gmail without an Internet connection (sort of…) Official Gmail Blog Jan 27 2009

• The Truth about YSM Account Optimizations

  The Yahoo Search Marketing Blog tries to set things right (Jan 27 2009)

• Yahoo SM – EXTREMELY scary new terms

  Webmaster World on Yahoo optimizing your PPC account (Jan 6 onwards)

• Study: Click fraud closed 2008 at all-time high

  Thanks in part to armies of compromised computers, click fraud reached an all-time high in the fourth quarter. (CNet Jan 28 2009)

• Google Adds Chrome-Like “Most Visited Sites” Tab To Firefox

  Now, when you will open a new tab in Firefox, you will be able to get a list of your most visited sites with this update. (PageTraffic Blog Jan 30 2009)

• Marissa Mayer Sticking to Google Like Icing on a Cupcake

  Google VP denies rumors of her leaving Google (Valleywag Jan 26 2009)