SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 5, 2008

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Mar. 5, 2008 at 4:11pm Eastern by Barry Schwartz

SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 5, 2008

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

Pew: Cellphones More Important To Users Than Internet, TV, Email
Anyone who doubts how important mobile phones are and will become as a platform and marketing medium needs only to look at the latest Pew Internet & American Life report. Cellphones are now more important to US adults than the internet, television, landline phones and email. In addition, an increasing...
Google Analytics Benchmarking Feature, Data Sharing & Audio Ad Charting
Google Analytics has added three major features today, two of those features are related and the third is a standalone feature. Google Analytics users can now have the option of comparing their site's data to industry benchmarks. Analytics users can opt-in or opt-out of the data sharing feature by logging...
Looking For SMX Advanced 2008 Session Ideas (And Speakers)
I'm often asked what's the best way to speak at one of the search conferences we organized. The answer is simple. Suggest a great session. Do that, and you've got an excellent chance to present. And right now, we're looking for some great session ideas for our SMX Advanced conference...
Matt Cutts & The Search Community Interview
I finally got around to watching Whiteboard Friday - The Matt Cutts Interview and felt it was worth pointing out. Matt Cutts, Google Engineer, is a huge part of the SEM industry. Rand Fishkin's interview with Matt Cutts explores that relationship. Questions include how Matt got into being the face...
Obit: A West Coast Digerati Deadpools Ask.com
Goodbye, Ask.com. You caught my eye back in 1997 as an unusual meta search engine that asked questions to get answers. By 1998, I counted you alongside Google and Direct Hit as shining examples of what to watch in search. You'd dumped depending on others for search results and...
Yahoo Celebrates Its 13th Birthday; Will There Be A 14th?
As Yahoo celebrates its 13th birthday, the looming question is: will the company be able to find an alternative to the Microsoft offer or will Steve Ballmer & Co. prevail? According to the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo has recently "stepped up" talks with AOL about potentially folding AOL's business...
Google Adds Page Load Time To Quality Score Algorithm
A WebmasterWorld thread tipped both Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Roundtable (that's me) off on the fact that Google has added an additional quality score factor to the AdWords ranking algorithm. The new factor is page load time. If your destination URL is a very slow loading page, then...
Hot Or Not? Finding Hot Prospects With Lead Scoring
As powerful as search marketing is for B2B lead generation, it has ironically served to increase the ages-old friction between sales and marketing. This is because when buyers use search to research solutions and find vendors, they are extremely early in the buying process—often long before they are ready...
SEO Site Audit: A Wise Investment For All Companies
More and more savvy companies are undertaking search engine optimization (SEO) site audits, to assess the current search-effectiveness of a site, what needs to be done to improve it, and to track how a site is performing over time. I've been recommending website audits for years—after all, the accounting...
10 Reasons to Attend SMX Social Media - Register Before March 15 and Save!
Early bird registration for Search Marketing Expo - SMX Social Media in Long Beach, CA ends March 15. Register today and you'll pay only $1195 for all the sessions, keynotes, networking and parties. Space is limited so secure your spot now. This West Coast version of SMX Social Media is...
Google Tests Additional Search Box Within Search Results
Tamar tipped me off to people seeing secondary search boxes in the Google search results. I see them myself now. For example a search on amazon returns this search box directly under the snippet but above the URL, here is a picture:...