We apologize for the lack of search engine news wrap-ups and newsletters for the previous weeks. The Pandia site is run by a wife and husband team on a part time basis, and we came to the conclusion that we needed a vacation.

It seemed the world of search engines managed well without us, while we were walking in Scotland and the English Lowlands.

But we are back now. Here are some of this week’s headlines, plus a few others from the weeks we were away.

(PS: Could someone please tell the Brits they are driving on the wrong side of the road! It is very confusing, not to say dangerous!)

• The insane world of “No linking Policy” – what happened to the interNET?

  On companies and sites with a “no linking policy” or “linking restriction policy” (State of Search Kuly 15 2010)

• Google Removes WiFi Gear from Street View Cars

  Google cars have resumed their tours of Sweden, Ireland, Norway and South Africa (Inside Google July 9 2010)

• Microsoft’s Search Crawler MSNBot To Be Renamed As Bingbot

  Trivial but a much needed update. (TNW June 28 2010)

• Google Chrome Creeps to 7.2% Worldwide Browser Share

  Microsoft Internet Explorer rose back above 60 percent to 60.32 percent (Google Watch July 1 2010)

• Apple Allows Google AdMob Ads for iPhone 4, iPad

  Despite new language in its developer terms to the contrary, Apple is allowing targeted ads from Google (Google Watch July 2 2010)

• Google News Users Hate Changes, Threaten to Go to Bing

  Many people griped when Google added more refinements to the left-hand rail (Google Watch July 5 2010)

• Google releases 500 scans of Ancient Greek and Latin texts for research

  Google sharing high-resolution digital scans of over 500 volumes of Ancient Greek and Latin, dating from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. (Inside Google Books June 25 2010)

• Bing changes interface

  Options for narrowing a search has been moved (P Bradley June 24 2010)

• China renews Google's ICP license

  Google keeps its google.cn domain ( June 28 2010)

• Rumour: Google Games still on for 2010 launch

  Google puts $100m into Farmville developer (techradar July 2010)

• Microsoft Bing reaches 12% of search market

  Bing and Yahoo both gain ground on Google (techradar July 2010)

• Translating Wikipedia

  Google helps translate more than 16 million words for Wikipedia into Arabic, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Swahili, Tamil and Telugu. (Google Blog July 14 2010)

• Google News Brings Back Its Old Home Page … Kinda

  In response to sometimes loud and angry user feedback, Google News has tweaked its home page (SE Land July 16 2010)

• Picture of New Google Image Search Design

  A new design for Google Images. (SE Roundtable July 16 2010)

• Is Google Getting Sloppy?

  Google Buzz, background images and changes to Google News. Not enough testing? (Marketing Pilgrim July 16 2010)

• Yahoo: We’re Switching to Bing Next Month…or Maybe Next Year

  Expect a full transition to Bing’s search results as early as August (Marketing Pilgrim July 16 2010)

• Google Buys Metaweb To Bolster Answers, Google Squared & Rich Snippets

  Metaweb is a search company that figures out entities and not just words. (SE Land July 16 2010)

SMX West: March 2-4
Go to California!