SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 6, 2009

Nov 6, 2009 at 3:07pm ET by Barry Schwartz   

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

Google’s Home Page Promotes Motorola Droid Google really wants you to buy a Motorola Droid, the hot new phone that just hit stores today. In fact, Google is so enamored that it’s advertising [...]

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Google AdWords Makes Conversion Tracking “Easier”

Nov 6, 2009 at 9:18am ET by Barry Schwartz   

The Google AdWords blog announced they have made it easier for advertisers to add and track the conversions for their search ads. Google has added to the AdWords interface sections for (1) Conversions, (2) Webpages, and (3) Code. The Conversion page shows you the conversion actions you’re tracking. Web pages shows the web pages [...]

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Best Buy: “Would You Like A Google App With That?”

Nov 6, 2009 at 8:56am ET by Greg Sterling   

In the increasingly high stakes game of mobile search, Google is leaving almost nothing to chance. Take the company’s very interesting new partnership with Best Buy stores for example. According to the Google Mobile Blog: We’re happy to announce today that we’ve partnered with Best Buy Mobile to make Google Mobile App available through Best Buy [...]

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SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 5, 2009

Nov 5, 2009 at 5:07pm ET by Barry Schwartz   

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

How Google & Yahoo Make Money Off A Twitter Typo Domain Like many people, I misspelled a domain name today when I was trying to visit a web site. I typed Twiter.com (with [...]

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Google Tests New AdSense Management Console

Nov 5, 2009 at 1:11pm ET by Barry Schwartz   

Google AdSense announced today at the CRS Conference that they are currently testing a new interface for the AdSense console. The beta is currently being tested by few publishers, but Google promises to allow “thousands of publishers” to test this out “over the coming weeks.” Here is a picture of one of the screens:

Features include:

More [...]

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Yahoo Helps Music Lovers Find Videos More Easily

Nov 5, 2009 at 12:00pm ET by Matt McGee   

Yahoo has added a set of refinements to its video search engine that will help music lovers find videos more quickly. A video search for [U2] shows the new refinements in action: On the left side of the screen are new options to drill down to see U2 videos related to specific albums or specific [...]

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MicroHoo-Ying Eyeing Global Reach, What About Ask?

Nov 5, 2009 at 8:40am ET by Greg Sterling   

There’s a report from Reuters this morning that Microsoft and Yahoo are considering expanding the scope of their search deal “outside the United States”: Microsoft Corp Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said on Thursday the company could look to extend its search engine partnership with Yahoo outside the United States, if it gets regulatory approval. Wasn’t that already the [...]

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MSNBot 1.1 Gives Way to Bot 2.0

Nov 5, 2009 at 8:24am ET by Greg Sterling   

Microsoft is retiring its MSNBot1.1 and introducing its next bot: 2.0B. According to the Bing Community blog:

As MSNBot 2.0b enters full-scale production, the time has come to retire our previous generation bot, MSNBot 1.1. By the end of the first week in November, you will no longer see the following user agent in your referrer [...]

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Google Removes Phone Numbers From 7 Pack

Nov 5, 2009 at 8:05am ET by Greg Sterling   

Google has apparently removed phone numbers from the so-called 7 Pack of organic local results. The numbers were present as recently as 24-36 hours ago. Immediately below is an example of a recent search result for “dentist, San Francisco” (within the last several weeks) and then for the same query this morning:

The result on the [...]

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SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 4, 2009

Nov 4, 2009 at 5:03pm ET by Barry Schwartz   

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

Build Your Own Google News Home Page With Custom Sections Google News has made it easier to customize its home page with the creation of a Custom Sections Directory that includes material created [...]

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Google Doodles For Sesame Street & Wallace & Gromit

Nov 4, 2009 at 9:56am ET by Barry Schwartz   

Today is the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street and the 20th of Wallace and Gromit, the two beloved children shows. For the special day, Google has several logos (doodles) up at the various Google properties, depending on the local preference of show. Big Bird is the most noticed one and it is featured in the [...]

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Bing & Google Maps Update Map Imagery

Nov 4, 2009 at 9:44am ET by Barry Schwartz   

Both Bing and Google have updated their maps imagery. The Bing blog announced an additional 9,460 square kilometers of imagery added to Bing Maps. Not to be outdone, Google announced that not only are they updating their imagery, but they will increasing the frequency of those updates. In addition, Google Transit [...]

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A Year Later, Google To Host New Webmaster Chat

Nov 4, 2009 at 9:38am ET by Barry Schwartz   

A year or two ago, Google hosted a webmaster chat even every few months. They were designed to allow webmasters to see presentations from Googlers on web search and SEO topics and then ask questions to Googlers, who would answer those questions in real time. The Google Webmaster Central blog announced the first [...]

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Yahoo Confirms Real-Time Search Test

Nov 3, 2009 at 6:54pm ET by Matt McGee   

Yahoo has confirmed the recent rumors that it will test a real-time search feature in its search results. According to the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo will run a test “in the coming days” with OneRiot, a real-time search engine that focuses on links and content from Twitter and other social media sources. PaidContent reports that [...]

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SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 3, 2009

Nov 3, 2009 at 4:54pm ET by Barry Schwartz   

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

Google Targets Spammers With New Local Business Listing Guidelines Google has tweaked its guidelines for local businesses that use the Google Maps Local Business Center. The new guidelines are listed on Google’s Business [...]

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Google Targets Spammers With New Local Business Listing Guidelines

Nov 3, 2009 at 3:19pm ET by Matt McGee   

Google has tweaked its guidelines for local businesses that use the Google Maps Local Business Center. The new guidelines are listed on Google’s Business Listing Quality Guidelines page. On Search Engine Roundtable, Barry Schwartz shows both the old and new guidelines, while on his blog, Mike Blumenthal charts the differences between the two versions. According to [...]

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Google AdWords Sitelinks Now Available For Some Advertisers

Nov 3, 2009 at 3:09pm ET by Barry Schwartz   

The Google AdWords blog announced that the Sitelinks within AdWords, which we saw in August, is now officially available for some advertisers. A Google AdWords ad can have up to four Sitelinks in the ad. Google named them “Ad Sitelinks” and are similar to the organic Sitelinks. Google said these ads give users “more [...]

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Google Maps Creates New UK Town Called Argleton

Nov 3, 2009 at 2:21pm ET by Matt McGee   

Google and its UK map provider, Tele Atlas, are cleaning the egg off their faces this week over the appearance of a town called Argleton in Google Maps. It’s right there on Google Maps, and there’s even an Argleton place page with photos and more. Problem is, Argleton doesn’t exist.

The Telegraph picked up the story over [...]

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Turkey Claims Google Owes Them $47 Million In Back Taxes

Nov 3, 2009 at 10:30am ET by Barry Schwartz   

TechCrunch reports Turkey is claiming Google owes them 71 million Turkish Lira or 47 million US dollars in back taxes. In fact, the Turkish government is fining Google for the money. Google claims all the funds are through their Ireland branch and Google does not owe Turkey any taxes. Google technically has a company [...]

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Google Tries Related Links Again

Nov 3, 2009 at 10:08am ET by Barry Schwartz   

Back in 2006, Google had a product named related links, which showed related sites on the internet based on your content. Google just recently relaunched related links at relatedlinks.googlelabs.com. The major difference between the old related links and the new one is that the new one only shows related content from within your [...]

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