Herzliya, Israel - Jinni, a developer of personalized content search and discovery technology, has raised a $1 million first round of financing from Start-Up Factory, Globes Online reported.

San Francisco - Mechanical Zoo, a social search start-up founded by a number of ex-Google employees, has raised $750,000 in convertible debt from angel investors and is set to launch a beta test of its service next month, CNET News.com reported.

Online video is a hot topic these days with new entrants coming online (e.g. PluggedIn) and out of beta (e.g. Hulu) every day. We are seeing users spend a bit more more time with the video websites, spending an average of 16 minutes and 12 seconds for the week ending April 12, 2008 as compared to 15 minutes and 14 seconds during the same week last year. One interesting trend that I have noticed is that search engines and social networks are now accounting for an equal share of referred traffic. Last week (ending April 12, 2008) the share of upstream traffic from search increased 35% over the same week the previous year, while the referred traffic from social networks declined 20%.

Dulles, Va. - AOL (NYSE: TWX) announced on Tuesday that it has acquired San Francisco-based Sphere Source, a developer of contextual search tools which offers related content to publishers.

Menlo Park, Calif. - Cuill, a stealth-mode start-up developing "a new approach to search," announced on Tuesday that it has raised a $25 million second round of equity financing, led by Madrone Capital.

Sunnyvale, Calif. - In the midst of its efforts to ward off -- or sweeten -- a takeover bid from Microsoft (NASD: MSFT), Yahoo (NASD: YHOO) announced on Wednesday that it will embark on a limited test of Google's (NASD: GOOG) AdSense for Search service, which will deliver Google's ads alongside Yahoo's own search results.

San Francisco - Blinkx, a searchable index of Web video, announced on Wednesday the launch of blinkx BBTV, a downloadable application that delivers a library of independent films and other programming from existing partners. The service uses hybrid peer-to-peer streaming, similar to Joost, and offers full-screen video in addition to Blinkx's speech recognition-powered video search. The company said it will be adding dozens of additional channels in coming months, and will also offer to power BBTV players for partner media and entertainment sites.

Las Vegas - Vlingo, a provider of voice-powered mobile phone applications, announced on Wednesday that it has raised a $20 million second round of financing, led by Yahoo (NASD: YHOO), which will also offer Vlingo's voice-powered technology on its mobile oneSearch service.

Leesburg, Va. - Loladex, a local search start-up founded by two former executives from AOL, said on Wednesday that it has launched its first product on social networking site Facebook. The company said that its application puts a new spin on search, helping users find local businesses based on recommendations from their friends and other sources. The service also allows people to see picks from third-party partners such as OpenTable.com and ServiceMagic.com, as well as Washingtonian magazine. The company said that it plans to release versions for other social networks in the coming months.

New York - Viewdle, a provider of video search technology, has raised an undisclosed amount of capital from KIT Capital, a Dubai-based investment firm.

Burbank, Calif. - Mefeedia, a personal video portal and video search service, has raised $250,000 in angel funding from unnamed investors, and launched its search engine index of 15,000 video sites, NewTeeVee reported.

Yahoo (NASD: YHOO) is planning a move of its European headquarters from London to Geneva, Switzerland, for tax reasons. Some 70 of its top managers in the UK are told to relocate or lose their jobs, according to Financial Times (FT).

Mountain View – Google will announce a new service for web publishers to help them manage their online ad sales and serve ads every time a reader lands on a page, the WSJ reports. "The offering is an early sign of Google's plans to broaden its ad offerings following the completion of its $3.1 billion DoubleClick Inc. acquisition this week."

Mountain View, Calif. - Searchme, a new search engine that delivers results as a browsable stack of preview pages, and provides suggestions of categories as users type search terms, has announced the launch of its search engine in private beta.

San Francisco - Blinkx, the developer of a video search engine, on Thursday announced content partnerships with the BBC, CBS and The Weather Channel. With the agreements, the site will further expand its programming, which already includes 18 million hours of indexed video and audio content from more than 220 partners.

New York - Magnify.net, a community video platform where users can create embeddable video channels populated with clips from across the Web, has raised a $1 million first round of financing, TechCrunch reports.

The news is buzzing, starting with a report from UBS that alleges that Google's paid clicks are down in January. Analysts from a number of firms have been speculating that this may be a sign that a slowing economy is affecting search. Not so fast. If a recession is in fact affecting search, we should see a drop in the amount of traffic going from Google to retail sites (our Shopping & Classifieds category). The following chart shows the percentage of traffic over the last three years actually increasing.

Sports Illustrated has published its annual Swimsuit Issue. I noticed the website in my weekly fast movers report and thought it could make a fun post. When I looked at the data however, something struck me as really odd. The top search term sending visits to the Swimsuit Issue website was "si swimsuit issue". The term had a huge spike this year but was relatively flat for the past two years. I had expected it to spike for each annual issue. What did this year's issue include, I wondered, to cause such a frenzy online.

Los Angeles - Gimado, the operator of a search engine for streaming and downloadable music files, has landed $300,000 in seed funding from an undisclosed investors, Mashable.com reported.