SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 29, 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:

• Finally, Yahoo 360 To Be Shuttered In July
  

  More than 18 months after first saying that Yahoo 360 would close, the company has finally announced a date: July 13, 2009. Why the delay? Yahoo’s announcement says they’ve been looking for a way to preserve its users’ content: “Before we could retire 360, we had to find a sustainable and adequate solution for your personal information. [...]

• Open Letter To Google & The AP: Reveal The Licensing Terms
  

  Discussions between Google and the Associated Press about renewing their content licensing deal continue, I assume, but all’s quiet recently on the negotiation front. I want to disrupt that. It would be wrong in this particular case for both parties to reach a deal where “terms are not disclosed.” The future of [...]

• Google I/O: New Advances In The Searchability of JavaScript and Flash, But Is It Enough?
  

  This week at Google I/O, Google talked a lot about the evolution of the technological capabilities of the web. HTML 5 is ushering in new era of browser-based development and applications. Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, kicked things off with, “My message to you is that this is the beginning of the real win of cloud [...]

• Keyword Research: Listen To Your Customers!
  

  While SEO is a part of our daily lives, the process of digging into keyword research hasn’t gotten any easier. Yet, as we know, keyword research is critical to any SEO effort. While you may find the process of uncovering and selecting the most appropriate keywords for optimizing your site to be fairly painstaking, it [...]

• How To: Excel at Excel for SEM Applications, Part 1
  

  Ever since Microsoft Excel beat Lotus 1-2-3’s butt to become the world’s preferred spreadsheet solution, it has never looked back. It’s hard for any search marketer to think of a world without Excel. I tell rookies new to the industry to move themselves a tiny bed into cell A1 because they’re going to [...]

• Search In Pictures: Google Street Trikes, Yahoo iPhone Orchestra & Hacky Sacks
  

  In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more. [...]

• Did Google Cleverly Upstage Microsoft’s Bing?
  

  Mike Arrington thinks that Google engaged in “a little stealth black ops mission” and blunted the full impact of the Ballmer Bing announcement yesterday by announcing Wave. Whether Wave represents a huge new development in digital communications remains to be seen, but almost every major news outlet had to cover it and divide its attention [...]

• Digital Literacy And Digital Diligence
  

  Do you regularly use Google’s Wonder Wheel? How about SearchWiki, Yahoo Correlator or Search Monkey? I’m guessing about 95% of you said no. And you’re no ordinary group of searchers . In terms of search literacy, you’d be ranking in the top 0.1% of the population. In a randomly assembled group of 1000 people, you’d [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Google Wave: A Complete Guide, Mashable
• Microsoft Launching Real Time-Focused IE8 Bundled with OneRiot Search, Read/Write Web
• Search in Yahoo! Mail – A Powerful Tool, www.ymailblog.com
• See Google Wave in Action (Video), Google Blogoscoped

Business Issues

• Ads For New Microsoft Bing Search Engine…On Google, TechCrunch
• Chlorine for the “Cesspool:” Why Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo Will Battle to Win Twitter, parnassusgroup.com
• Google’s Macro Software Threat, Forbes
• Microsoft’s Lu on Bing: ‘A First Step’, BusinessWeek
• Yahoo Exec Jeff Dossett Leaves Company, kara.allthingsd.com
• Yahoo! Sites Ranks as Top Display Ad Publisher in March with 43 Billion U.S. Ad Views, comScore
• Yoelle Maarek Joins Yahoo! Labs, Yahoo Search Blog

Link Building

• Q and A: How do you choose "Good" Directories for Link Building?, www.ask-kalena.com

Local, Maps & Mobile

• 3D tours added to the Google Earth Gallery, Google LatLong
• Google Maps Guidelines: What has Changed?, Mike Blumenthal
• Locksmith Spam on Bing? You Bet, Small Business SEM
• Nearby Intersections on GOOG-411, googlemobile.blogspot.com

Other Items

• Bing vs. Bing!, stanleybing.blogs.fortune.cnn.com
• The Bing Definition Microsoft Probably Doesn’t Want You To Get In Your Fortune Cookie, TechCrunch

Paid Search & Contextual

• adCenter Community Web Site Will be Locked Friday-Saturday, www.adcentercommunity.com
• You’ve got a Friend Connect gadget, Inside AdSense

Searching

• Google Increases White Space Around Logo on Result Pages, Google Blogoscoped

SEM Industry

• SEMJ.org Promotes Semantic Search Education, BruceClay.com
• 30 Must Follow SEO Twitter Users, www.seoptimise.com
• 80% Of SEOs Said They Can Beat Wikipedia In Google, Search Engine Roundtable
• Meet Microsoft at SMX Advanced, June 2-3, 2009, www.adcentercommunity.com
• Ruud Questions: Ralph Tegtmeier aka Fantomaster, Search Engine People

SEO & SEM

• 5 SEO Content Mistakes You’re Making, The SEO Scoop
• 76% of SEMs Don’t Fully Trust Google’s Keyword Tool, Search Engine Roundtable
• Aaron Wall – SEO Book On The ShoeMoney Show, www.shoemoney.com
• How To Use Google Search Suggest’s New Enhancements To Monitor Your Brand and Keywords, www.roirevolution.com

Social Media

• How Much Is Your Tweet Worth?, Search Engine People
• We Are Hunted Presents the 99 Most Popular Songs on Twitter, Read/Write Web
• Wikipedia bans Church of Scientology, The Register

Video, Music & Image Search

• Hulu Labs debuts with desktop app, download.cnet.com

Web Analytics

• Understanding Correlations in Google Analytics, www.roirevolution.com
• Web Analytics Tips & Tricks: Top Ten Myths About Google Analytics, Google Analytics Blog

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

• Bing: It isn’t a game changer, but…
• Microsoft’s Bing Vs Google: Head To Head Search Results
• Headlines for Article Writing
• SEO Geeks Resource Library – search patents and IR papers
• What’s The Real Value of Brand PPC?
• Will Digg Be a Better Place Without Shouts?
• Online Business Evolution: An IM Spring Break Presentation
• Who owns your Twitter account? The final answer