Want a snapshot of the day's search marketing news? Here we've collected today's top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

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Powerset, the most talked about semantic search engine that no one has seen, is slowly opening its doors to scrutiny. Last night, the company hosted an event for bloggers and tech media at its San Francisco headquarters.

Some coverage of the event:

• ZDNet's Dan Farber (Powerset: The natural language search mashup platform)
• Nitin Karandikar of Software Abstractions (Powerset is Not a Google-killer!)
• Tailrank's Kevin Burton (Powerset - Out of Stealth)
• Ethan Stock (PowerSet: Let's Re-Invent Everything )
• John McKinley of Great Falls Ventures (Powerset - no pretender to the throne, but the real deal)
• Microsoft's Don Dodge (Powerset - Open Source approach to beat Google)
• Mike Masnick of Techdirt (Powerset: Is There More Than Buzzwords And Patent Threats?)
• Google Blog Search
• Techmeme

The company gave attendees a look under the hood, and introduced a new developer platform called Powerlabs. Both the search engine and partner program are expected to launch in September. “We want as many people in Powerlabs to help us build and test the product. Powerlabs tells us when we are ready to go. We could have 50,000 people QAing our product,” said Steve Newcomb, COO and co-founder of Powerset. So far, Powerlabs has 10,000 users, according to ZDNet's Farber.

SEO and web analytics company Engine Ready reminds us that while the 'long tail' is not something to forget about, the 'short tail' of search provides the majority of your conversions. And as such should be of major concern to all search marketers. Their report shows how the top 10 terms get as much as 60% of the conversions.

The San Diego-based company provides a quick case study that is worth the read.

People search engine Spock is still in invitiation only beta, but I had a chance to review the product. One of the first things that becomes evident is that all of its search results are about people. This is a vertical search engine through and through. This approach gives Spock substantial leverage. For example, if you enter in the query "NFL", you will get a list of people that have been tagged "NFL".

Spock appears to use a combination of algorithmic tagging, where it develops tags for people based on web crawling, and people powered tagging, where users can add their own tags. So the crawler will be a driving force in populating the search engine data set pre-launch, but over time input from people will have an increasing impact on the results.

As this article by Alex Iskold on ReadWriteWeb observed, the result will be that famous people will receive far more tags than others. This leaves the question as to how much information you will receive on the less famous.

This question aside, Spock provides a remarkably clean and efficient people search engine. The results are easy to interpret, and you can navigate among people who are "related" (i.e. that share the same tag, as in my NFL example above). I look forward to its public release.

The majority of U.S. Presidential candidates have a negative reputation on search engines, according to a new study by Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim. The 2008 Presidential Election Candidate Reputation Study found that 15 of 18 candidates had negative results within the first 20 when a user searched for their names on Google and Yahoo.

Democrats Barack Obama and Mike Gravel, and Republican Ron Paul were the only candidates with no negative search engine results.

“The study demonstrates that with more than a year to go until the 2008 presidential election, candidates are not fully managing their search engine reputation,” said Beal, founding principle of Marketing Pilgrim. “As the election race heats up, voters will be influenced by what they discover on the web. A single negative Google result could be enough to lose the election.”

In today's In-House column, "Stop In-house SEO Disasters Now!," Kevin Ryan pens an ode to the in-house SEO practitioner, with a few best practices and a guide to identifying problematic personalities.

Want a snapshot of the day's search marketing news? Here we've collected today's top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

Click to read the rest of this post...

Are kid-friendly search engines worth using, or are they better served by the major engines? Debby Richman put them to the test, comparing them in categories like visual appeal to a child; relevance to a child; commercial vs. educational results; and ease of navigation for 7-10 year olds.

See how the kid-friendly engines stacked up against the majors in today's SearchDay, Savvy Little Searchers.

Putting together a strategy for get links to a site is one of the hardest parts of SEO. Too many people jump right in to trying to get people to link to their site, when they should be taking the time to lay the proper groundwork in place to have a link worthy site. Here are 9 quick tips on how to approach the task:

1. Understand the anatomy of getting a link - Since we shy away from buying links, or pursing link swaps, you are left with the task of getting someone to provide you with a one way link. I.e. getting something from them, and providing nothing in return. Or is that true? Not really. What you end up giving out, is your expertise and knowledge. This can be embedded in articles, tools, or special promotions. People who care about their visitors will link to good content, and this ends up being a fair trade. It also gets you links that are unassailable in the eyes of the search engines, and it's the best way to get links from authoritative web sites.
2. Understand your target audience - Who are your prospective customers? What type of content would they like to see on a site like yours? Since relevant links count most, answering this question is a big key to success.
3. Develop a map of the places where you are going to get links - Blogs, magazines, trade organizations, industry associations, distributors, resellers, colleges and universities, government sites, ...? Be creative in coming up with ideas. A potential target for linking to you is ANY site which is related to your site's content, or that can reasonably publish an article related to your business. For example, if you run a sailing web site for the Massachusetts area, Boston.com is a great target. They could certainly run an article about sailing in the Boston area, and if they cover your site as a resource, you get a great link.
4. Develo;Develop a content plan for your site - Now that you know your audience, and where you are going to get links from, come up with a plan for the great content that you are going to put on your site. To succeed, you need to put things of value out there. People will not link to you to help you make money. But they will link to you if your content, or tools, or promotions provide a truly unique value to the visitors to their site.
5. Develop a content syndication plan - Here you can broaden your thinking even further. The concept here is to write high quality articles and give them to other web sites for placement on those sites. You only do this type of work to get very high quality links. But you can get some awesome links this way.
6. Consider social media sites - While these are great sources of huge spikes in traffic, the traffic is not always of the best quality (although this varies from site to site). The big win is in the links you get out of it. A really well structured campaign can bring you lots of links, and in some cases, high quality links, including links from traditional media sites. To do this well, you need to really understand the audience on the social media site you are targeting. You will need to develop content that targets that audience, while keeping it related to the theme of your site.
7. Implement a PR campaign - This is much, much more than simply sending out press releases. You need to have a plan to reach out to traditional media and bloggers as a follow up to your press releases. Unless you have lots of contacts and a great reputation with the media in your space, our recommendation is that you do this with the help of a PR agency, and leverage their contacts.
8. Understand the investment cost - All of this takes resources. In particular, developing content on an ongoing basis, building relationships with related sites, syndicating content, pursuing social media sites, PR campaigns, ... It's a lot of work. Make sure you build into your plan the resources to execute your plan.
9. Be in it for the long haul - Link building is not a start up activity, it's a permanent one. It is an ongoing cost to your business that never goes away.