SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 2, 2011

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

From Search Engine Land:

• 7 Reasons Why Nixing Branded Keywords Is Not The Fix For CPC Inflation

  “If your friend jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?” While this classic parenting question is cliché, it makes a good point. And it’s one that search marketers could also learn from. Especially those who are thinking about eliminating brand keyword phrases from their paid search campaigns just because their competitors are doing […]
• Schema.org: Google, Bing & Yahoo Unite To Make Search Listings Richer Through Structured Data

  Today, “in the spirit of sitemaps.org“, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo have announced the joint alliance of schema.org. This alliance provides a common foundation of support for a set of microdata types — some that previously existed and some that have been created as part of this initiative. Microdata is a type of structured mark up […]

• Your Landing Page, Their Site?

  SEO is a game of tradeoffs and opportunism. Do you go after that single high-value keyword, or do you cede it to a big competitor while growing your long-tail traffic? Do you pay up for professional copywriters, or rely on user-generated content to fill up your pages? Will you write great blog content by spotting […]

• Could You Turn A Windows 8 Smartphone Into A Windows 8 Computer?

  One of the most interesting things out of Microsoft’s demo of Windows 8 yesterday that future tablets could easily be turned into fully functional Windows computers, since the OS is the same. But how about Windows 8 phones? Could you do that too? Would you interpret a smile from Windows president Steven Sinofsky to be […]

• 4 Ways Post-Call Conversation Analytics Demonstrate Intent & Validate Conversions

  Advertisers today should be leveraging new developments in voice recognition speech-to-text technologies to glean key insights and identify important trends across their inbound caller base. Post-call conversation analytics are most effective in determining which ads or SEM campaigns are driving quality inbound phone leads and drilling into key caller intelligence. When combined with pre-call analytics […]

• Does Gilt Sellout Bode Well For Google Chromebooks?

  Yesterday members-only site Gilt offered an invitation only one-day sale on a “limited edition” version of the forthcoming Samsung “Series 5″ Chromebook — and reportedly sold out of it. The notebook will officially go on sale on June 15th. The model being sold by Gilt was the $499 3G version. The WiFi-only version is $429. […]

• SMX Advanced Seattle Next Week – Register Before June 6 for Complimentary Expo+ Passes

  Search Marketing Expo – SMX Advanced Seattle takes place next Tuesday and Wednesday at the Bell Harbor Conference Center. Register before June 6th for a free Expo+ Pass ($50 at the door). An Expo+ Pass entitles you to: Attend “Plus” sessions that cover emerging search engine marketing topics. Plus sessions feature case studies, best practices […]

• Search Month: May 2011 Search News, In Review

  Search Month is an exclusive monthly newsletter for Search Engine Land premium members that recaps stories covered on Search Engine Land from the previous month. Below are top stories organized by topic that happened over the past month. Each topic (or Search Engine Land column) is also a link, where you can click through and […]

• SearchWeek: May 30, 2011

  Search Week is an exclusive weekly newsletter for Search Engine Land premium members that recaps stories covered on Search Engine Land over the past week. Below are top stories organized by topic that happened over the past week. Each topic (or Search Engine Land column) is also a link, where you can click through and […]

• Google Eliminates Checkout Badge From SERPs

  Those brightly-colored Google Checkout badges will disappear from e-tailers’ AdWords ads, according to a post in Checkout Help first spotted by eCommerceCircle. They’ll continue to be displayed in product search. Checkout icons in AdWords were originally introduced in 2006 and a new badge design was rolled out in 2007. As for the elimination of the […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Business Issues

• Facebook, Zuckerberg say ownership contract forged, Reuters
• Jack Ma would like to buy Yahoo (and, no doubt, fire Carol Bartz), m.itworld.com
• U.S. calls Google China allegation very serious, Reuters

Link Building

• Historic Backlinks Index Update, Majestic SEO Blog

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google Places Now Borrowing Yelp Reviews Without Attribution In iPhone App, TechCrunch
• DataMarket Mapper app provides quick, map-based visualization of DataMarket data, www.bing.com
• Groupon Now brings hourly deals to San Francisco, news.cnet.com

Paid Search & Contextual

• Averages Lie: Part 27, Rimm Kaufman

SEM Industry

• From NonProfit To Agency: 3 Search Engine Marketing Tips I Wish I Had Known, Search Marketing Standard
• Human Facebook Ads Machine, Addie Conner, Unplugged, AIM Clear Blog
• Looking Back after 6 Years and 1,000 Posts, SEO By The Sea

SEO & SEM

• An Optimizer’s Guide To Facebook Ads Performance Reports, AIM Clear Blog
• Delegating Your SEO Tasks Into a Successful SEO Campaign, Search Engine Guide
• Hiring Search Talent: Profile of a Killer SEO, Search Engine People
• Ingenuous Content: Thinking Beyond The Social Norms, www.blueglass.com
• Reward: $1,000 to Anyone Who Provides A Credible Link Value Test, SEO Theory
• The Buzz on Long Tail Keywords [Infographic], SEO.com
• When and When NOT to Outsource SEO, Daily SEO Tip

Social Media

• Google Corrals Users Into Social Network, No One Screams, outspokenmedia.com
• How People Currently Share Pictures On Twitter, blog.sysomos.com
• Online Influence Is More Than Just Social Media Activity, mackcollier.com
• Postling Rolls Out New “Suggestion” Features To Help Small Biz Owners Master Social Media, TechCrunch
• What Are You Doing To Earn Facebook Likes, www.wolf-howl.com

Video, Music & Image Search

• YouTube Now Lets You License Videos Under Creative Commons (Remixers, Rejoice), TechCrunch
• YouTube and Creative Commons: raising the bar on user creativity, YouTube Blog
• YouTube Reactions, Google Operating System

Web Analytics

• The Making of Google Analytics v5, Google Analytics Blog
• Social Analytics: Recording 1 and Twitter button usage in Google Analytics, www.distilled.net

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

• Free Competitive Research on Domains – Very comprehensive review on different free tools that can be used to evaluate domains.
• In Social Media, Your Return Represents Your Investment – Brian Solis offers an interesting take on social media. I particularly appreciate the graph that shows the relationship between the difficulty level of particular social media tactics vs. the return that they can deliver.
• New Communication Ad Extensions for Google AdWords – A great post on the new Google AdWords Communication Ad Extensions.
• How to Write A High Converting Sales Page – If you're getting by writing your own sales copy and web pages, here's a checklist of 10 copywriting basics that every piece of sales copy should contain, especially if the goal of the site is to make sales or drive leads.
• I’d Like To Have An Argument Please – Is relevance an objective truth or a subjective bias? Get a digest version of the deep thinking being done on reasoning, search and human computer information retrieval.
• Should You Buy PPC Ads for Your Brand Keywords? – “I rank organically for my brand terms. Why would I pay for ads on them?” How many times have you heard this? Or said it? Advertising on brand terms seems to be an ongoing discussion that still hasn’t been settled. So, I’m going to try to settle it now.