SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 10, 2009

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

From Search Engine Land:

• Microsoft Cuts Live Labs Staff By Half, Will Focus On Search
  

  PaidContent.org reports that Microsoft’s Live Labs group has been cut in half, and the remaining crew will focus only on search. The departing team members will move on to other Microsoft product groups, such as Live Search, Windows Mobile, and Microsoft Advertising. In a post on the Live Labs Blog, Microsoft downplays the changes: [...]

• Yahoo, Microsoft Talking Again: Report
  

  All Things Digital reports that Yahoo and Microsoft are talking once again — not about an acquisition, but about possible search and advertising partnership opportunities. The report says talks have been going on for “several weeks” and included a face-to-face meeting last week with new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. [...]

• Large PPC & SEO Campaign Management – Webcasts Next Week
  

  Don’t miss our upcoming webcasts next week: Tuesday, April 14, Marin Software’s Marc Barach and Chris Wine will discuss the “pain points” in large paid search campaigns, including reporting and analytics, linking conversion data with click and cost data, and calculating bids and hitting ROI goals. “Rx for Large Paid Search Campaigns: Anatomy [...]

• Making Your Search Campaigns Work Harder During The Economic Downturn, Part Three
  

  In this last installment of my series on “Making Search Campaigns Work Harder in the Downturn” (part 1, part 2), I will cover essential bidding techniques and strategies, and what I call “insider” bidding secrets. Let’s begin with keyword categorization. One way to categorize your keywords is to relate them to the number of conversions they [...]

• Google Tweaks Search Results Display For Review Sites
  

  As spotted by Google Operating System, Google is testing a new tweak to its search results for pages that involve reviews. It looks like this: [...]

• Do Your Landing Pages “Feel” Right?
  

  Question: What do web users and professional athletes have in common? Answer: They both make fast decisions about their next action based on limited information in the blink of an eye. This thought occurred to me as I was reading How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer. It’s quite an amazing book. I say that because it’s a [...]

• Google To Create “Hulu” For Music Video, Moves Toward Inclusion Of More Professional Content On YouTube
  

  YouTube spawned Hulu and Hulu is having a big influence on the future of YouTube. Hulu has had great success with brand advertisers, while YouTube has struggled to sell itself to brands despite being the dominant video site online (see chart below). Accordingly, last month ClickZ reported that YouTube was getting a Hulu-like makeover that [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• New in Labs: Inserting images, Official Gmail Blog
• Send a video message with Google Latitude, Official Google Blog
• Yahoo Mail suffers ‘brief’ outage, news.cnet.com
• Live ID goes down around the world (back now), www.liveside.net

Link Building

• Link Building Tips with Loren Baker – from SEO 101 on WebmasterRadio.FM, Stepforth

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Street View Goes Full-Screen, googlemapsmania.blogspot.com
• Google Maps adds new Local Business Center User Guide, Mike Blumenthal
• Google Street View cameraman in row with photographer, Telegraph
• Hitwise: Mapquest still in the lead but Google Maps is gaining, Mike Blumenthal
• The Trouble With Yelp (and other online directories), www.localsearchnews.net
• Virtual Earth API Release Information, April 2009, blogs.msdn.com

Other Items

• Mosaic: bringing diverse perspectives together, Official Google Blog
• Yahoo Japan to Serve Ads to Passersby Based on Age, Gender, www.marketingvox.com

Paid Search & Contextual

• Companies that Fight Click Fraud Enjoy the Downturn, Wall Street Journal
• Improving PPC Search Engine Campaign Results Using Generic Domain Names, www.memorabledomains.co.uk
• Starting up New Interface Thursdays, Inside AdWords
• Moving beyond the paid search keyword, www.imediaconnection.com
• Account access issues resolved, Inside AdWords
• Know the (Quality) Score, www.ysmblog.com
• Recession Busting SEM Tactics for the Financial/Lending Advertiser, blog.efrontier.com
• Stats catching up, Inside AdSense

Searching

• In China, A Search Engine for the Elderly, Wall Street Journal
• Stat of the Week No. 5 – The Most Popular Search Term at the Library is…, labs.nypl.org
• The Slow Erosion of Google Search, bokardo.com

SEM Industry

• Ask.com Asks What You Know About Autism, BruceClay.com
• Ask.com Asks Users to Support Autism Speaks, Ask.com Blog
• Can Search Build Brands?, MediaPost
• Do SEOs Need To Know Coding To Be SEOs?, Search Engine Roundtable

SEO & SEM

• Whiteboard Friday – Domain Trust and Authority, SEOmoz
• Creating new hot content for trending topics, www.jenniferslegg.com
• Diagnose Critical Website Architecture Issues for SEO, Search Engine Journal
• Does Google Look At Keywords In Long Titles?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google: Should I use underscores or hyphens in URLs?, YouTube
• Links Based Economy? No. Passion Based Economy? Yes, SEO Book

Social Media

• Compete: Twitter Passes New York Times, industry.bnet.com
• How to Monitor Your Social Media Presence in 10 Minutes a Day, blog.hubspot.com
• Domain Pigeon now finds open Twitter names, news.cnet.com
• Just Say No to Digg’s DiggBar, www.3dogmedia.com

Video, Music & Image Search

• Veoh’s Hail Mary: Spreading Video Search Across The Web With Video Compass, TechCrunch

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