SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 13, 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:

• Switzerland Suing Google Over Street View
  

  Switzerland is taking Google to court over privacy concerns related to Google’s Street View service. The BBC reports that Swiss privacy official Hanspeter Thuer is leading the country’s case. Mr Thuer is especially concerned about people shown in sensitive locations such as hospitals, prisons or schools. He also said that the height of the camera was problematic [...]

• Site Speed, Google’s Next Ranking Factor
  

  At PubCon, Matt Cutts from Google said there is strong lobbying in Google to introduce a new ranking factor into the algorithm. The new ranking factor has to do with how fast a site or page loads. Matt described this as one of his ‘what to expect in 2010′ bullet points in his [...]

• Obama: Tops For “Who Is Failure” In Google
  

  I’d thought the googlebombs relating to “miserable failure” and “failure” had finally been defused earlier this year. Guess not. Ranking tops in Google right now, the official White House page for US President Barack Obama: [...]

• Search In Pictures: Google X-Men, Carol Bartz Singapore, GooglePlex Blocks
  

  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. Google’s Kirkland Team Dressed Up as X-Men: [...]

• Bing Maps Hops The Pond: Now In The UK
  

  You may not have known this but the Microsoft Maps experience in the UK was totally different than in the US. The former was based on multiMap, a company Microsoft acquired in 2007. Here’s what the UK experience looks like with multiMap: [...]

• Analyzing Short & Long Keywords Using Google Analytics
  

  As a search agency we see many different styles of PPC campaign design, from in-house teams, other agencies, and occasionally running across those from the search engines themselves. Broadly speaking, campaigns can fit into one of two categories: [...]

• Feng-Gui’s Predictive Heatmaps Let Graphic Designers See Things Through Others’ Eyes
  

  Heat mapping tool Feng-GUI helps graphic design and conversion optimization professionals gain that much-needed distance from their work. The tool lets you upload an image and the software returns an attention heat map overlaid on the image—even without any people having seen the image! This is called predictive heat mapping. So how does it work and [...]

• How To Use Twitter As A Content Distribution Network
  

  If you think social media provides value now, just wait. From a developer’s standpoint, Twitter is an exciting application because of the freedom provided through their API. A rogue hacker can download one of the many Twitter libraries, connect to the API, query for the top trending topics at that time, take and put the trending [...]

• Day Three: PubCon Vegas 2009
  

  Day three is just about complete of PubCon Vegas 2009, at least the conference sessions. I thought I share many of the session coverage I found written on the various blogs throughout the day. Here is PubCon Vegas day three coverage:[...]

• Now Google Really Is A Phone Company, Confirms Gizmo5 Acquisition
  

  You saw the rumors earlier in the week and we reached out to Google for confirmation of the reported Gizmo5 acquisition. But at the time they didn’t say anything. In fact they said, “We’re always talking to various companies about various things, but we don’t comment on rumor or speculation.” It’s no longer speculation because [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Google Storage Upgrade Does Not Upgrade, Search Engine Roundtable
• New on My Yahoo! for November, My Yahoo! Blog

Business Issues

• Yahoo’s Bill Michels Joins Factual as Developer VP, Factual
• A CNET Conversation with Eric Schmidt, CNET
• Google’s lifeline for AOL shows signs of decline, MarketWatch
• Switzerland takes Google to court, BBC NEWS
• Web Editor Moor of ‘Dallas Morning News’ Moving to Yahoo, www.editorandpublisher.com

Link Building

• Are "Web Site Designed By" Links Bad?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Using Xenu Link Sleuth to Find Broken Landing Pages, SEOptimise

Paid Search & Contextual

• Making health-related ads more useful, Google Public Policy Blog
• Site maintenance on Saturday, November 14, Inside AdSense
• Upgrade to AdWords Editor 7.6.1, Inside AdWords

Searching

• Google’s Safe Browsing Site: sb.google.com, Search Engine Roundtable

SEM Industry

• No Mr. Rubel, SEO Isn’t Becoming Extinct, Search Engine People Blog
• PubCon 2009 Vegas Coverage Recap, Search Engine Roundtable

SEO & SEM

• AP To Ask Google For A Better Search Ranking, Business Insider
• Audit your site with the IIS SEO Toolkit, BlogStorm
• Matt Cutts Gives More Caffeine Details, Talks Site Speed, WebProNews
• New & Interesting Insights Into Google Rankings & Spam from Pubcon, SEOmoz
• Retail SEO for E-Commerce And Consumer Products: 5 Tips, Online Marketing Blog
• Using Noarchive to Remove Your Cache – What’s the Impact?, seogadget.co.uk
• Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: November 13, 2009, Search Engine Roundtable
• We Have No Index, No Follow, Canonical Tags: How About Specific Keyword Blocking, Search Engine Watch Blog

Social Media

• Google Sidewiki: The first 50 days of valuable entries and new API features, Official Google Blog

Video, Music & Image Search

• 1080p HD Is Coming to YouTube, YouTube Blog
• Flickr & Snapfish: Ready…Set…Print!, Yodel Anecdotal
• First Google Image Result for Michelle Obama Pure Racist, Search Engine Roundtable

Web Analytics

• "Afternoon, Frank." "Hey howdy, George.", AdSense for Feeds
• New Feature Spotlight: Analytics Intelligence, Google Analytics Blog