SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 8, 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:

• Bing’s “Honey Badger” – An Upgrade To Webmaster Tools

  This morning at our SMX Advanced conference, Bing’s Stefan Weitz announced “Honey Badger” — Bing’s latest upgrade to its Webmaster Tools. Weitz explained that today’s upgrade primarily involves three things: Crawl setting management: users can ask Bing to crawl a website less during busy times of day and more during off-peak hours Role management: set […]

• EMarketer: Among Online Ads, Search To Gain Most New Dollars In 2011

  Search will bring in $14.4 billion this year in the U.S., representing 46.1% of total online spend, and it will continue to command the lion’s share of spend through 2015, according to a new forecast by eMarketer. The big picture for U.S. online ad spending is looking bright, as well. EMarketer expects the sector to […]

• SMX Advanced Liveblog: Social Data & Search With Bing’s Stefan Weitz

  Day two of our SMX Advanced conference is set to begin shortly with a keynote session on the “Confluence of Social Data & Search.” Bing Director Stefan Weitz is due to give a presentation/demo and then chat with Danny Sullivan. With 10 minutes to go before we start, I see no evidence of pandas on […]

• Seeking To Avoid A “Fractured Internet” Google Pulls Out Of Kazakhstan

  In the words of Borat, the fictional Kazakh journalist and alter-ego of comedian Sasha Baron Cohen, the government of Kazakhstan is not being “very nice” to the internet. The autocratic government of President Nursultan Nazarbayev has been for the past several years seeking to assert more control over the internet and online content available to […]

• Twitter Adds Automatic Shortening For URLs

  Twitter announced a new feature allowing users to tweet easier and safer. The official t.co Twitter shortener will now automatically shorten URLs right from the Tweet box when using the web version of Twitter. The feature shortens links to 19 characters, and shows users a preview of the destination link. When a user’s link will […]

• It’s Not “He Said, She Said” Over Google Rankings & Facebook Shares

  On Tuesday morning, SEOmoz’s Rand Fishkin presented evidence at our SMX Advanced conference that there’s a high correlation between Facebook Shares and ranking well on search engines. In afternoon, the head of Google’s web spam team Matt Cutts said that Google doesn’t see Facebook Share data at all. An SEO-search engine catfight? No, both actually […]

• So Long and Farewell: Google’s Oldest Vertical Search Engine, Uncle Sam & Others Gone

  Yesterday, Search Engine Roundtable and InfoDocket both pointed out that Google’s U.S. government specialty search tools, Google-Uncle Sam and USGov.Google.com had been offline for several days. Additionally, Google’s long time specialty search tools Linux Search, Microsoft Search, Apple Search, and BSD Search were also unavailable. Google has now confirmed both to us via email and […]

• SMX Advanced 2011: Day One Live Blog Coverage

  The first day of SMX Advanced is in the books, and here’s a roundup of the live blog coverage we found around the web. Advanced Analytics at SMX Advanced in Seattle, community.microsoftadvertising.com Advanced PPC Analytics – Live Blogging SMX Advanced, www.click2rank.com Advanced PPC Analytics – SMX Advanced, BruceClay.com Overlooked, Underloved and Unknown Analytics – SMX […]

• SMX Advanced Liveblog: ‘You & A’ Keynote With Google’s Matt Cutts

  Day one of our SMX Advanced conference is wrapping up with a late afternoon tradition: Danny Sullivan’s “You & A” conversation with Google’s top spam cop, Matt Cutts. The session is due to start at 5:00 pm PST but, just between us, it’s bit hectic up front and gut feeling is that we’ll be a […]

• Google Introduces Embedded Version of AdWords Sitelinks

  If you’ve enabled the Ad Sitelinks extension on your AdWords campaigns, you may soon see your actual text ad copy hyperlinked, rather than seeing an additional line of text. Google today announced the new format, which it says it will use when ad copy matches exactly the Sitelinks text set up by the advertiser. The […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Business Issues

• Guess Which Company Is Winning The War For Tech Talent, www.businessinsider.com
• Oracle wants a huge cut of Google’s mobile advertising revenue plus compensation for fragmentation of Java, fosspatents.blogspot.com
• Apple, Google cloud can help curb online piracy: U.S., Reuters
• Exclusive: Former Yahoo Brad Williams Take Over as PR Head Honcho at Groupon, allthingsd.com
• What is Yahoo!, and Where is it Going?, www.yadvertisingblog.com
• What’s Twitter’s Identity Now That It’s Apple’s Identity Provider?, allthingsd.com

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Check in to 7-Eleven, check out space! (and over 21,000 other prizes), blog.foursquare.com
• One Local Search Ranking Factor I Disagree With, Small Business SEM
• Apps From Foursquare, LinkedIn, Netflix Put Data at Risk, Firm Finds, Wall Street Journal
• Google Calendar Appointment Slots – Infrastructure for Places Scheduling?, Mike Blumenthal
• Know when your bus is late with live transit updates in Google Maps, Official Google Blog

Paid Search & Contextual

• 8 Reasons to Bid on Your Own Branded Keywords in Paid Search, www.roirevolution.com
• Ticker Tuesday: Fixing PPC Problems With Keyword Match Types, PPC Hero
• Ad Sitelinks – More than Meets the Eye, PPC Hero
• AdWords Negative Keyword Lists: What They Are (And What They Should Be), www.blueglass.com

Searching

• Authorship markup a useful stride forward in search, blog.traffick.com
• New Hunch Mobile for iPhone, blog.hunch.com
• Exclusive: New York Times Recommendation Engine Generated 17 Million Views in April, www.beet.tv
• Is Schema.org Really a Google Land Grab?, Read/Write Web
• Poll: Personalization Is A Form Of Censorship, Search Engine Roundtable
• See the seafloor like never before on World Oceans Day, Google LatLong

SEM Industry

• What Fuels Search Marketers – Case Study, actionableinsights.covario.com

SEO & SEM

• 3 Secrets to Optimizing Landing Page Copy, blog.hubspot.com
• rel="author" is Same-Site Only, andybeard.eu
• SEO Ranking Factors – 2009 and 2011 Compared, www.buzzmaven.com
• 14 Ways To Optimize Your Ecommerce Marketing, www.getelastic.com
• 8 Methods Lots of Tools for Getting to Know Your Audience, SEOmoz
• Google Buzz SEO – Evidence Buzz Now Used For Indexing, andybeard.eu
• Google Panda Update: Machine Learning and Tree Structures, oh my!, www.webuildpages.com
• Hurry Up and Wait: SEO is About Quick Action and Patient Results, Search Engine Guide
• Only 4% Claim To Have Fully Recovered From Google Panda, Search Engine Roundtable
• The Decline of Article Marketing as we Know it, www.marketingwords.com
• The Story Google Did Not Tell You About Your Rankings, www.seo-theory.com
• Ultimate Blogger’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization, www.socialmediaexaminer.com

Social Media

• 4 Ways to Grow Your Blog with the Power of Experts, www.copyblogger.com
• Why Delicious.com is More Social Than You Think [and Not Going Anywhere], www.blueglass.com
• You need a company blog because the customer (thinks he) is always right, mackcollier.com
• Facebook Expands Availability Of Facial Recognition Globally — Here’s How To Turn It Off, www.allfacebook.com
• Fans, Friends, Followers, and the Reason Why None of it Matters, mackcollier.com

Web Analytics

• Web Analytics Career Guide: From Zero To Hero In Five Steps!, Avinash Kaushik

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

• How to Use LinkedIn Today to Find Popular Content – Curation and sharing great relevant content is one of the best ways to increase your online influence. The author gives us 3 tips on how to best leverage LinkedIn to build a better overall online profile.One of the best ways to grow your social influence is to consistently curate and share timely, relevant content with your connections so you stay visible and valuable.
• Pilot Webmaster Tools’ Search Queries data in Google Analytics – Google announces a limited pilot for Search Engine Optimization reports in Google Analytics, based on Search Queries data from Webmaster Tools.