This week’s search engine news headlines from all over the Web, as brought to you by Pandia.

• Google Algorithm Predicts When Species Will Go 404, Not Found

  Biologists have figured out the most efficient way to destroy an ecosystem — and it’s based on the Google search algorithm. (Wired Sep 4 2009)

• Google Loses Leader of China Offensive

  After hiring him away from Microsoft and fighting a legal battle to keep him, Google is now losing Kai-Fu Lee, the executive who led its latest effort to chip market share away from China’s Baidu. (ECommerce Times Sep 4 2009)

• Google Domestic Trends: tracking economic sectors

  Google Blog: Google Domestic Trends tracks Google search traffic across specific sectors of the economy. (Sep 3 2009)

• Europe Overtakes Asia in Number of Searches

  Comparing data released by comScore this year and comparing what they said last year, the story emerges the Europe has actually surged ahead in terms of number of searches. (Multilingual Search Sep 3 2009)

• Google News shines a Spotlight on “in-depth” journalism

  Google News has quietly added a new section that steps back from the ever-quickening news cycle to highlight “in-depth pieces of lasting value.” (Nieman Journalism Lab Sep 3 2009)

• Twitter is the New RSS : Google Feedburner Exec Now Twitter COO

  Imagine the ability to open a pro Twitter Analytics account with a monthly micropayment structure and be able to track all referrals whch are passed through the Twitter API (SE Journal Sep 3 2009)

• Google Crawls Robots.txt Files Daily

  JohnMu from Google posted in a Google Webmaster Help thread that Google typically crawls a site’s robots.txt file on a daily basis. (Se Roundtable Sep 3 2009)

• Google Patents World’s Simplest Home Page

  After a five-and-a-half-year fight, Google and its attorneys have managed to convince federal bureaucrats to bestow a patent on the company’s iconic home page. (ValeyWag Sep 2 2009)

• Digg Goes Nofollow to Reduce Spam

  Links on user profiles, comments and not-so-popular posts will get the nofollow tag, meaning it won’t pass along link juice. (SE Watch Sep 2 2009)

• “Halal” search engine lets Muslims search “safe”

  Wikipedia describes Halal, or “Haram” as “an Arabic term designating any object or an action which is permissible to use or engage in, according to Islamic law.” (Search Cowboys Sep 2009)

• Hardly any changes in European search shares

  Google has 93 percent of the European search market (Search Cowboys Sep 2 2009)

• Google’s “NoTranslate” Tag To Prevent Translation in Search

  For a few years now, some webmasters have been trying to figure out ways to prevent Google from allowing users to translate their pages with the Google Translate tool. (SE Roundtable Sep 1 2009)

• Sony Defaults to Google’s Chrome Browser; Chrome OS Next?

  “Our decision to carry Chrome is based not only on the browser’s quality and functions, but also on our relationship with Google,” a spokesman for the Japanese electronics conglomerate said. (Marketing Pilgrim Sep 1 2009)

• Google News Incorporates Search Suggestion Feature

  Google Suggest, a query suggestion tool, has been added to Google News. (SE Watch Aug 31 2009)

• Wolfram|Alpha’s API Deal with Bing.com the First of Many?

  Wolfram|Alpha will open up an API and become the provider to a host of data mashups. (Marketing Pilgrim Aug 31 2009)

• Share your Search with Bing and Ping

  Search results with links to your Facebook and Twitter account (Bing Community Sep 3 2009)

How did we live without it?

And now for the silliest search engine of the week:

Toogle is a text version of Google’s image search - it creates ascii text images out of the images Google finds for you. (Thanks to Knowbodies!)

Search engine optimization for Google News

Here’s a video from Google on how they find and rank news in Google News.