Midweek News Roundup

A few notable things have happened around the local search and media worlds so far this week.

— As mentioned earlier, Local Matters launched a new local search destination.

— Google announced a series of refinements to its search technology at its “Searchology Day,” including video search and universal search. More is explained — including a webcast — by Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land.

— MySpace has launched a series of branded video channels for premium online video content. This seeks to ride the wave of online video popularity that will be explored (with more of a local angle) in a White Paper (sub req.) due out early next week. More on the announcement from TechCrunch and the NewTeeVee blog.

— On the same video subject (and following Monday’s post about the challenges of video search), video search company Blinkx has struck a distribution deal with the socially oriented personalized search site ChaCha. The press release is here.

— The Praized Blog has interesting commentary on Weather.com’s ascent to the eighth most-trafficked media site and implications for Yellow Pages publishers.

— Donna Bogatin comments on Facebook’s integration of classifieds (TKG coverage here). She argues that Craigslist will continue to win out over other sites that attempt to cross-pollinate social networking and classifieds — despite New York Times coverage that has indicated otherwise. Elsewhere, this trend of melding social media and classifieds is covered by ClickZ.

— Lastly, some data: ZDNet’s IT Facts blog has a few interesting data points including traffic to IAC Web sites, online video monetization, landline churn and online shopping (related to last week’s post on online-offline purchase funnel).

Stay tuned for more in-depth write-ups of conversations over the past week with new local search start-ups.