SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 16, 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:

• Google Expands Sitelinks Beyond Top Search Result
  

  You’ve probably seen it yourself already, and now Google has confirmed some changes to how sitelinks appear in their search results. In the past, sitelinks only showed below the No. 1 listing in the search results, and they typically appeared in two columns with up to eight total links. That won’t change, but moving forward, it’s [...]

• Yahoo Shutting Down Jumpcut Video Service
  

  After disabling new uploads in December, Yahoo will formally kill off Jumpcut in June. More than just a video upload-and-watch site, Jumpcut allowed users to share videos and photos, creating essentially a library of “stock” clips and images that any user could include in his/her own videos. It also offered online video creation and editing tools. [...]

• Last Call For SMX Advanced Speaking Pitches!
  

  Interested in speaking at our SMX Advanced search marketing conference in Seattle this June 2 & 3? Our speaking pitch form closes at the end of next Monday, April 20. So get your pitches in! Below, some more information on pitching and the twice sold-out show in general. When you use the pitch form, [...]

• Microsoft Integrates Cashback And Products Vertical
  

  Microsoft announced yesterday that it had folded its Cashback program into Live Search Products. Cashback began as a incentive program for consumers to use Live Search as well as CPA-based advertising vehicle for retailers and e-commerce sellers. Cashback icons appeared beside ads responsive to commercial queries for participating marketers: Cashback icons (like Google Checkout icons) drove [...]

• A Deeper Look At Robots.txt
  

  The Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP) is not exactly a complicated protocol and its uses are fairly limited, and thus it’s usually given short shrift by SEOs. Yet there’s a lot more to it than you might think. Robots.txt has been with us for over 14 years, but how many of us knew that in addition [...]

• Opportunities For Small Businesses Online
  

  Our clients often ask us for help in picking their next markets and verticals—they are usually interested in the hot markets and verticals, where many small and medium businesses (SMBs) already invest money online. Palore provides this information by analyzing millions of web pages and seeing which SMBs advertise and where they advertise. The chart below [...]

• comScore: Google Extends Search Lead Slightly
  

  Google continues to expand its search market share lead according to data released Wednesday by comScore. According to comScore’s measurements, Google’s share of U.S. searches in March was 63.7%, up from 63.3% in February. Yahoo and Microsoft both remained essentially static in March, down .1% and up .1%, respectively.

  comScore also says the number of searches conducted [...]

• Google’s New Referrer String Includes Ranking Data (At Least For Now)
  

  Your analytics software can already tell you a lot about the traffic you’re getting from natural search: which search engines are sending traffic, what keywords are sending traffic, which pages are getting the most search engine traffic. But wouldn’t it be nice to know exactly where in the search results your page appeared when the [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Tasks Feature Spotted in Google Calendar, Google Blogoscoped
• Universal Exports, at your service, adsenseforfeeds.blogspot.com

Business Issues

• Decision Time For Facebook: Term Sheet Received At $2 Billion Valuation, TechCrunch
• Google Announces First Quarter 2009 Results, MarketWatch
• Google Braces for Its First Quarterly Decline, mediamemo.allthingsd.com
• Google Moves Arora To Global Ad Sales Role, Replaces Kordestani, paidContent.org
• Google’s Q1 forecast looks cautiously optimistic, VentureBeat
• Should Schmidt Resign from Apple’s Board?, eWeek
• Twitter Wants Distribution Deals, Not a Buyout, New York Times
• Universal Search Takes Off: Kosmix Posts 419% Growth In March, TechCrunch
• Yahoo’s Bartz Meeting UK Team; Where Will The Axe Fall Next?, paidContent.org

Link Building

• The Best in the Link Building Business: Most Linked-To Domains, SEOmoz

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Making Google Map Maker more accessible and useful, Google LatLong
• Webcams Layer in Google Maps, Google Operating System

Paid Search & Contextual

• Analytics and AdWords tips – Part 2 of 4, Inside AdWords
• Increase Your Adsense Income by 86% in 15 Minutes, The SEO Scoop
• New Interface Thursday: Using keyboard shortcuts, Inside AdWords
• Uploading Campaigns from other PPC Providers into adCenter in 3 Easy Steps, www.adcentercommunity.com

Searching

• Ask Since Jeeves: Adding Video News within Search Results to Image and News Clustering, SEO By The Sea
• Searches for Twitter Explode 130% in March’s Fastest Moving Search Terms Rankings, blog.compete.com
• Shutdown of Wikia Search proves empty rhetoric of collaboration, The Guardian
• Three Firefox add-ons enhance Google searches, news.cnet.com

SEM Industry

• Climb Aboard the Search Train, www.semportland.com
• So Little is Known about Us “out there”, John Andrews

SEO & SEM

• Blog Commenting for SEO, Search Engine People
• 10 Non-Google SEO Ways to Promote your Business Online in 2009, www.seoptimise.com
• 54% of SEOs Believe in Artificial Google PageRank, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Decides To Slow Down Search Results And Cloak Their New Tracking URLS, smackdown.blogsblogsblogs.com
• Google Shifts Position on SERP Tracking with Addition of New Referral Strings, Search Engine Journal
• Most SEOs Believe Google Has Keyword Specific Penalty, Search Engine Roundtable
• MSNbot 2.0b is ignoring robots.txt and No Index meta tags, www.chewie.co.uk
• NBC hit with Google Penalty, www.davidnaylor.co.uk
• Top Nine Tips For SEO Best Practice When Using Microsites, www.sitevisibility.co.uk

Social Media

• Flickr trends highlighted via Google-based app, news.cnet.com
• How to Get Thousands of Visitors from Flickr (And over 450,000 Account Views), www.pluginhq.com

Video, Music & Image Search

• Caption Editor Now in TestTube, YouTube

Web Analytics

• It’s finally here… the new and improved compete.com!, blog.compete.com

Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:

• Using Tag Seeding to Create Optimized Pages
• 4 Real Offline Uses Of Twitter
• Google Shifts Position on SERP Tracking with Addition of New Referral Strings
• Google Selectively Ignoring Meta Description Tags?
• MSNbot 2.0b is ignoring robots.txt and No Index meta tags
• L.A. Tech Scene Welcomes Web Dev & SEO Meetup
• Methods To Never Sell Anything On Craigslist
• Information Architecture at IMSB – Build it & They will Come
• 3 Multi-Feature SEO Toolbars Compared
• Case Study Shows Pushed SEO Works Better Than Natural Site Development
• Small Business SEO: How To Launch That Web site