As we mentioned it would, the SEO Newsletter took a mid-month hiatus this month to give the search industry time to travel to two very important search conferences. Yes, April was about conferences, conferences, conferences.

The industry kicked off the month traveling to the East Coast to take part in Search Engine Strategies New York. Lisa Barone from the Bruce Clay, Inc. blog covered 17 sessions on a wide array of search-related topics. You can find all of her informative and entertaining recaps in her SES NY '07 Session Recap.

If you're looking for something that we didn't get to cover, Search Engine Roundtable put together a team of nearly a dozen bloggers to cover an impressive 52 sessions. Barry Schwartz has posted links to all of their session recaps in his Search Engine Strategies '07 New York Session Coverage Roundup.

Two weeks after SES New York, Internet marketers packed their bags and headed to the West Coast for Ad:Tech San Francisco. We again packed up Lisa and shipped her off to the Bay area to liveblog another batch of conference sessions. You can find her coverage in the Ad:Tech San Francisco '07 Coverage Recap.

Both the Ad:Tech and Search Engine Strategies conferences can provide search marketers and wannabe search marketers with an almost overwhelming amount of Internet marketing know-how. At Search Engine Strategies, the focus is on search engine marketing. It's about understanding the search engines, their ad programmes, and everything else that goes into ranking well, both organically and in the paid space.

SES is known for its multi-track of sessions covering areas like search engine optimisation, paid search, video search, local and mobile search, search engine friendly design, analytics, branding, and lots more. Search Engine Strategies is a Must Attend event for anyone interested in entering the search marketing field or networking with the experts.

The focus of Ad:Tech is a little different. There are a small number of search-based sessions, like the SEO: Advanced Q&A session Bruce moderated last week, but the main focus is online advertising. Ad:Tech offers advertisers and newbie search marketers great introductory lessons on things like SEO and PPC, while also keeping them up-to-date on the hottest advertising and branding mediums like social communities, video on demand, behavioural targeting, vidcasts, podcasts and more.

Conferences are a great way to learn about the industry, discover new tricks of the trade and mingle with others in your space. With so many conferences out there, we recommend you familiarise yourself with each one's specific focus so you can pick the events that best meet your needs. Or you can just stay home and read all of Lisa's recaps on the Bruce Clay blog!

It was a slow month for employee shuffles. iProspect's Fredrick Marckini joined Isobar as their Chief Global Search Officer, while Bambi Francisco left MarketWatch, Dane Glasgow left Microsoft search, and Dodgeball founders Dennis Crowley and Alex Rainert resigned from Google. Everyone else in the industry must have been enjoying the conferences.

Google had a busy month. They acquired online ad firm DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in cash, bought video conferencing company Marratech, released Google Checkout in the UK, paired up with EchoStar to create an automated TV advertising system, and announced plans for an online presentation tool, as well as a 2007 launch for its Google Phone.

In non-Google launches, mergers and acquisitions:

• Microsoft put its recent Tellme acquisition to use and released a free 411 service (Google countered releasing a 411 service of its own).
• Ask.com announced plans for a new search algorithm nicknamed Edison
• Yahoo acquired Wretch, a Taiwanese-based social networking site, for $21.2 million
• Blinkx signed a deal with LookSmart to power its video search
• Mozilla launched a social network site for Firefox users called The Coop
• Experian purchased Hitwise for $240 million
• Reprise Media was acquired by Interpublic

In redesign news, TopSEOs, Facebook and AOL all released new and improved versions of their site.

We've already covered this month's Search Engine Strategies New York and Ad:Tech San Francisco conferences, but if you haven't seen the interview Bruce did with Total Picture Radio while in New York for SES, it's worth viewing.

Looking ahead, SEO Class will land in New York City on May 17-18, Danny Sullivan's debut Search Marketing Expo conference hits Seattle on June 4 and 5, Search Engine Strategies Toronto takes place on June 12 and 13, and Search Engine Strategies Latino Miami will round things out on June 18-19.

With summer on its way, international SEOs should keep those calendars handy. SEOToolSet training will land in London on June 13-15, in Cape Town, South Africa July 9-11, and finally in Sydney, Australia on August 6-8. More information can be found on the London training, South Africa training, and Australia training pages.

Attaboys

Some positive signs for Internet advertising community: The IAB and PricewaterhouseCoopers reported that online ad spend has overtaken print, and ZenithOptimedia predicts it will surpass radio in 2008.

Australian marketers are also seeing the benefits and are increasing their online ad spend to 22 percent of their total budget.

Hitwise reported that Google has increased its market share to an overpowering 64 percent.

Happy birthday to David Wallace's SearchRank and to David Winer's Scripting News blog which both turned ten this month. Congrats, gentlemen.

Buzz spread this month that Technorati might be looking to sell; however, Technorati founder David Sifry stopped by the Bruce Clay blog and quickly refuted these rumours saying there was absolutely no truth to them.

Search Engine Watch speculated we might soon meet Troogle - a Google-launched vertical search engine focusing on travel.

Has eBay acquired StumbleUpon? TechCrunch and many others reported that a deal had been made but we still haven't received a definitive answer. Maybe in May.