Direct dark matter searches - recent highlights

The experimental search for cold dark matter particles has seen signifcant progress over the last few years. A number of new results have been announced which are now feeding back interesting constraints on particular types of particle and their interaction strengths, even though no convincing positive detection has yet been made. The range of promising techniques (and named experiments) continues to grow to the point where it is no longer feasible to overview the whole feld in a digestible way within a single talk; hence this report will focus on some of the key experimental highlights from the last two years. Before doing that a reminder of the motivation and general requirements for such direct search will be given. As a conclusion the short-term prospects for more exciting results over the next two years will be outlined. both.