SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 17, 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 Adds Keyword Forecasting To Insights For Search Tool
  

  Google has announced a few new features in its Google Insights for Search keyword research tool. The most important, in my opinion, is a new forecasting feature that aims to extrapolate future popularity of keywords (based on historical trends and search patterns). Google says this forecasting feature is only available on a certain set of [...]

• Which Internet Yellow Pages Site Has The Best Rankings?
  

  One of the challenges for a local business that wants to rank for phrases like “reno dentist” or “nashville accountant” is that the large Internet yellow pages sites and similar local directories often take up a lot of the real estate on search results pages for “city category” phrases. Ergo, one of the most basic [...]

• Twitter Gets More Serious About Search
  

  We recently saw Twitter change the look of its public homepage to make it look more like a search engine. And last week we found out that Twitter’s new search guru is Doug Cook, who was formerly of Yahoo and inktomi. Cook also built a wine search engine called Able Grape as a kind of [...]

• Google Local Business Center Adds Coupon Link & Bulk Upload Verification
  

  The Google Local Business Center has added a way to link directly to your Google Maps coupons and has added a verification process for those who use the bulk upload process. Mike Blumenthal noticed the new link to coupon feature the other day. You can link directly to a specific coupon or to all your [...]

• Seven Common Mistakes That Cause New Advertisers To Fail
  

  The fundamentals of a good pay-per-click campaign have not changed over the past six years. However, every single day, advertisers new to the world of PPC advertising are making the same mistakes as veterans made years ago. You can save yourself lots of time and money by examining the mistakes of others so that you do [...]

• Three Ways To Optimize Business For Local Search Via Online Newspapers
  

  Local search marketing experts have long recommended that businesses improve their online presence by optimizing profiles in online yellow pages (IYPs) and local search engines. After accomplishing that, there still remains a lot of small, local “constellations” of geographically-oriented sites where companies should seek to maximize their presence as the next stage in their local SEO. [...]

• Practical Points For Perfecting Press Releases
  

  The rise of the web has revolutionized the simple press release, which has gone from being copy you post to journalists to being yet another form of online information, accessible by both the media and the public. However, while this means press releases can be extraordinarily useful, it also means the world is utterly swamped with [...]

• How To Be A PPC Pansy: 5 Tips To Weaken Your Campaigns
  

  Highly profitable PPC accounts aren’t for everyone. Here’s some tongue-in-cheek tips you can implement to play it safe with PPC.

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Gmail Nudges Past AOL Email In The U.S. To Take No. 3 Spot., TechCrunch
• The Fallacy Of The Link Economy, paidContent.org
• WP.me – shorten your links, WordPress.com
• Five golden rules, Yahoo Answers Blog
• The Complete FeedBurner Guide with Some Cool Enhancements, www.bloggerplugins.org

Business Issues

• The Gap Between Google and Rivals May Be Smaller Than You Think, New York Times
• Breaking: MySpace Close To Acquiring iLike For $20 Million, TechCrunch
• Gordon Crovitz: Orphan Works’ Copyright Laws Must Be Clarified, Wall Street Journal
• Yahoo Veterans Launch Rocket Fuel, A “Hybrid” Ad Network, TechCrunch
• New Google is the old Microsoft, TechFlash

Link Building

• Natural Link Building : Create an Online Presence and Linkable Brand, Search Engine Journal

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Bing Maps with PHP, Bing Maps Blog
• SMB’s, Local SEO’s Lose Their Best Friend at Google Maps, Mihmorandum
• TomTom iPhone Navigation Makes U.S. App Store Debut for $100, iPhone Savior
• Local Search Summit Wrap-Up, www.localsearchnews.net

Paid Search & Contextual

• Tune-up Your Ads About Tune-ups, Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog
• Save time with new AdWords spreadsheet editing, AdWords Agency Blog
• How To Geo-Target a National PPC Campaign, PPC Hero

Searching

• Weather History and Forecasts in Wolfram|Alpha, Wolfram|Alpha Blog
• Wolfram|Alpha Chemistry 101, Wolfram|Alpha Blog

SEM Industry

• Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: August 14, 2009, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google’s Logo Questioned On Who Wants To Be a Millionaire Show, Search Engine Roundtable
• Matt Cutts of Google Now Industry’s "Hot Guy"?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Maps Guide Jen Has Left the Building, Screenwerk

SEO & SEM

• Affiliate Datafeeds and Duplicate Content, Sugarrae
• Google Caffeine: What it really is, The Register
• Most Common Words in Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask, with Google Caffeine, SEO By The Sea
• How to Highlight Your Site Listing in Google SERPs, Search Engine Journal
• The Future of SEO – Structured Markup, seogadget.co.uk
• Uncovering web-based treasure with Sitemaps (SEM 101), Bing Webmaster Blog
• Bing SEO: 5 steps to top rankings, Pandia
• Perfecting Keyword Targeting & On-Page Optimization, SEOmoz
• YouTube and SEO, Bruceclay.com.au
• SEO Is Rocket Science, www.toddmintz.com

Social Media

• Yahoo Pretends To Tell You What Kind Of Twitter User You Are, TechCrunch
• What’s your social mojo?, Yodel Anecdotal
• Big noises join chorus behind Twitter TweetDeck, Times Online
• Huffington Post and Facebook Go “Social News,” With Connect on Steroids, AllThingsD
• Directory: 100 technology experts on Twitter, ZDNet
• Top 10 Web 2.0 Activities for Ecommerce, www.getelastic.com
• What Social Buttons Should Go On Your Site?, www.10e20.com

Video, Music & Image Search

• 5 Ways to Optimize Online Videos For Your Blog, Performancing.com
• iPhone 3GS Camera Pre-Caches Images Before You Take Them?, The iPhone Blog
• Specifying an image’s license using RDFa, Official Google Webmaster Central Blog