SearchCap: The Day In Search, October 7, 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:

• Search In Pics: Bing Seahawks Ad, Yahoo Acting Scary, Google Antitrust Protestors

  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. Bing Ads At Seattle Seahawks: Googlers Playing Nok Hockey: Google Wallet In Use: Yahoo Acting Scary: […]
• Google, Samsung Delay “Unpacked” Android Event Out Of Respect For Steve Jobs

  Samsung and Google were set to unveil the next Android “flagship,” the anticipated Nexus Prime, at an event next week in San Diego called “Samsung Mobile Unpacked.” It coincides with the CTIA wireless trade show, which has been moved from San Francisco to San Diego to protest a mobile phone radiation labeling requirement passed by […]

• How The Rise Of Mobile Devices Has Affected Search Spend

  A few months ago, I published a report about the rise of mobile devices including tablets. In this report, I showed that in a span of less than a year, mobile paid search spend went from 0.5% to 4.2% — an almost 9 fold increase. In that report, I also projected that by the end […]

• Bing Expands Local Business Portal: Group Deals, Virtual Punchcards & New Print Collateral

  Google may have most of the local traffic, but Bing’s local business tools are running laps around Google’s. When it launched in April, the Bing Business Portal already had outdone Google with several important features. Now, a new set of tools that Bing added within the past couple weeks puts it even further ahead of […]

• Demystifying Facebook’s “People Are Talking About This” Metric

  Earlier this week Facebook announced features and functionality that were mainly geared towards pages and ads. One of the newest metrics released is the “people are talking about this” for pages. The goal of this number is to track conversations happening around specific pages. However, we have seen more users becoming confused as to what the […]

• Tweets About Steve Jobs Spike But Don’t Break Twitter Peak Record

  As with Google, Twitter saw a spike in activity related to the death of Steve Jobs. However, the company said that the number of tweets per second didn’t break new records. The Peak Records Twitter told us that at 5pm PT yesterday, it saw 6,049 tweets per second happening at peak, with tweets continuing throughout […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Google eBookstore now Live in the UK, The Digital Reader
• YouTube now has movies in the UK, YouTube Blog

Business Issues

• 72% of Antitrust Lawyers Do Not Feel That Google Hurts Competition, Marketing Pilgrim
• European Commission OKs Microsoft’s Skype buy, news.cnet.com
• Facebook taps Microsoft Bing for Page content translation, www.zdnet.com
• Groupon Plans to ’Significantly’ Reduce Marketing Spending Amid Criticism, Bloomberg

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google Places Alert: Another Ugly Bug That Could Nuke Your Listing, Mike Blumenthal
• GPS to Correct Google Maps and Driving Directions as a Local Search Ranking Factor?, SEO By The Sea
• Single-language labels in Google Maps, Google LatLong
• The Promotional Potential of QR Codes, www.stayonsearch.com

Paid Search & Contextual

• Q3 Paid Search Data: Strong Growth Despite Economic Backdrop, Rimm Kaufman

Searching

• Google Definitions Bug: Requests To Email [email protected], Which Doesn’t Work, Search Engine Roundtable
• iPhone 5 Rumors Shaped Search Activity, weblogs.hitwise.com
• Weekly Yahoo! Search Trends – October 7, ycorpblog.com

SEM Industry

• Tell-Tale Signs It’s Time To Fire That Client, Outspoken Media
• Video: Google Panda 2.5, AdWords Landing Page, Steve Jobs Tribute & SMX Israel, Search Engine Roundtable

SEO & SEM

• Does Your Org Know SEO Squat? ‚îÅ SEM Synergy Extras, BruceClay.com
• AdWords Remarketing: A Step-by-Step Guide, blueglass.com
• Branding and Brand Building for SEO, Daily SEO Tip
• Local SEO Checklist for New Sites – Whiteboard Friday, SEOmoz
• Why You Can’t Separate Social Media and SEO, Search Engine People

Social Media

• Facebook is bigger than the whole Internet was in 2004, www.zdnet.com
• Failure to Launch: Google+ Growth Spurt Short Lived, insights.chitika.com
• Infographic: 60 Seconds of Social Media Sharing, PC Magazine
• Twitter: ‘We Are Not Blocking Terms Related To #OccupyWallStreet In Any Way, Shape or Form’, www.betabeat.com
• What Do Facebook Users Expect from Brands?, www.emarketer.com

Web Analytics

• How Google Analytics Is Impacting Business, www.socialmediaexaminer.com

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

• Will small businesses survive the future of SEO? – We are entering a new era of SEO, one where potentially small businesses will be squeezed out of the SERPs. Here is one strategy to combat this without needing a big brand budget…
• 5 Reasons You Shouldn’t Be a Content Marketer – You shouldn’t even think about producing content as a cornerstone of your marketing if …
• Eye-Tracking Google SERPs – 5 Tales of Pizza – Nice eye tracking study of 5 different pizza related searches and the varying listings on the search engine result pages.
• Keyword Research: Dealing With Uncertainty – A good approach to determining whether to "compete" in the SERPS for a keyword.
• Why Rank Checking Is Not Critical (at least for me) – An argument that the value of checking rank has declined over the last 10 years.
• New SEO Reports in Google Analytics Now Here – This week we noticed a new feature in our Google Analytics account – a  set of reports called “Search Engine Optimization.” Google announced that these reports are out of beta and now available to all users. Is Google really going to help us with our SEO?