SearchCap: The Day In Search, September 21, 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:

• Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should: Why DIY SEM Isn’t The Answer
  

  Everywhere you look today you can find books, television programs, and websites specializing in do-it-yourself. While this may be a great thing for folks who want to refurbish their homes with stylish but affordable interiors, it is not always the best choice for all things. Just because you can re-wire your home doesn’t mean you [...]

• Google: Stop Suing Over The Meta Keywords Tag, We Don’t Use It
  

  Google is telling the world what every seasoned webmaster and search marketer should already know: The keywords meta tag has no impact whatsoever on how Google’s search engine ranks pages. None. Zilch. Nada. And while Google often needs to be somewhat ambiguous when talking about how it ranks pages, the message in today’s blog post [...]

• Google’s Schmidt: Independent Yahoo Still Important To Competition
  

  Last year, Google and Yahoo were denied a deal that would have left Yahoo with its own search technology, after the US Department Of Justice rattled its anti-trust saber. This year, Yahoo’s pursuing a deal to sell off its tech to Microsoft. While Google CEO Eric Schmidt sees his company’s former [...]

• Microsoft Bing Search Ads To Test Favicons
  

  MediaPost reports Microsoft adCenter, Bing’s search ads, will be testing placing favicons and logos in the search ads. I have conducted about 20 queries to try to bring up such an ad, but I personally do not see them myself. MediaPost wrote, “James Colborn, director at Microsoft Advertising and long-time adCenter veteran, believes the [...]

• Yahoo’s New Ad Campaign: It’s You!
  

  The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the new consumer-facing Yahoo branding campaign is starting to appear in New York, with a personalization theme: It’s You!. According to the article: Yahoo is planning to reintroduce its battered brand to the public Tuesday with a massive global marketing campaign, according to people familiar with the effort. The Internet [...]

• Google’s Flying Saucer Logos Lead To H.G. Wells, Father of Science Fiction
  

  Google has come clean on what all these flying saucers Google Doodles were about. It is to honor the 143rd birthday of H.G. Wells, the Father of Science Fiction, who’s birthday is today. We actually expected this logo to show up today. Many of the logos, Google tweets and evidence or hints, [...]

• Seven Compelling Reasons That Now Is The Time To Ramp Up Paid Search
  

  Paid search accounts for about 50% of all digital advertising spending today in most major markets, give or take 10% (the UK clocks in as one of the most impressive English-speaking markets for paid search, clocking in at 58% of digital spend, according to econsultancy). For we diehards, the reasons for running paid search campaigns are obvious. [...]

• Big Brands & Social Media Part 3 – Putting The Plan Into Action
  

  After my last column on how big brands should organize around social media marketing, I thought it might be useful to get tactical and look at some specific ways that big brands can begin to move the needle on social media. Again, I’m crediting Bill Hunt with inspiring some of these thoughts in a great [...]

• Harvard’s Edelman Proposes A Bill Of Rights For Online Advertisers
  

  It’s time for an online advertisers bill of rights. So says Harvard assistant professor Ben Edelman, who has spent years researching Internet advertising and compares the current landscape to a “wild west.” Edelman recognizes the “staggering” opportunity that online advertising provides, but says the current system has problems that “threaten to destabilize online advertising—wasting advertisers’ [...]

• SMX East & The Return Of The Evening Forum
  

  One of my favorite sessions at the search conferences I’ve programmed for a decade now has been the Evening Forum. It’s been over two years since I last held one, and I’ve brought it back for our SMX East search engine marketing conference this Oct. 5-7. There’s no agenda to the Evening Forum, which will be [...]

• Eric Schmidt’s Favorite Google Product? Chrome!
  

  What’s Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s favorite Google product at the moment? When I asked him that this week, I expected a “I love all my children equally” answer. Instead, Schmidt surprised me answering without hesitation: Google’s Chrome browser. “The one that I am the most pleased with is Chrome. This is a personal [...]

• A Primer On Website Testing
  

  Search marketers can learn a lot from scientists. Scientists spend their life testing things, one after the other, incessantly trying to discover new interactions between atoms, molecules, viruses, bacteria, etc. One of the greatest scientists of all time, Albert Einstein, said, “A theory is something nobody believes, except the person who made it. An experiment [...]

• Dream: Google’s “Did You Mean” Meets Kanye West
  

  It’s not real. But I sure wish it were, Google going all Kanye West on people searching for Taylor Swift. In the mockup above you can see Google responding “I’m really happy for you, and I’m gonna let you finish your search, but did you mean: beyonce” instead of the usual “Did You Mean” spelling correction. The [...]

• What Google’s “Caffeine” Update Means For Paid Search Campaigns
  

  Google recently announced that a massive operations overhaul is in the works. “Caffeine,” as it’s known internally, is described by Google’s Matt Cutts as primarily driven by “under the hood” changes to improve Google’s indexing technology, allowing the engine to be more flexible and efficient in the way it collects pages. He went on to [...]

• Department Of Justice Files Objections To Google Book Search Settlement
  

  As expected, the US Department Of Justice today has filed a list of objections and modifications it would like seen made in the proposed settlement to the Google Book Search lawsuit. It’s not saying that the settlement should go back to square one. In fact, it suggests that “momentum” potentially could be lost to improve [...]

• There’s No Caffeine In Google Results Yet, Cutts Says
  

  Google’s search results change regularly, but with the impending rollout of Google Caffeine, there’s a lot of people wondering if that’s what the changes are. Google’s Matt Cutts told us today that Caffeine has not yet been rolled into the main Google.com search results. Twitter has seen its share of questions about the Caffeine rollout: [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Google Apps sics crawlers on public docs and sheets, The Register
• Google and cloud computing bring access to vital data, South Florida Business Journal
• Google voice and video update for Snow Leopard, Google Talkabout
• Is Google giving Gmail back to the UK?, thenextweb.com
• Yahoo Mail Users Starting To Get New Interface & Features, Search Engine Roundtable

Business Issues

• Fed plan helps Google in cloud race with Microsoft, ComputerWorld.com
• Google Sued by Indian Portal for Trademark Infringement, PC World
• Yahoo Adds Zimbra to the Garage Sale, as It Tries to Shed What Isn’t “You!”, AllThingsD

Link Building

• 3 Link Building Weapons, www.dazzlindonna.com

Local, Maps & Mobile

• New Korea Tourism Layer in Google Earth, Google Earth Blog

Other Items

• New german doodle, Google Blogoscoped
• Bell ringing at NASDAQ, Yodel Anecdotal

Paid Search & Contextual

• Some AdSense Publishers Still Not Able To Login: Confirmed Issue, Search Engine Roundtable

Searching

• Taking it to the field, Bing Search Blog
• 4 Google Search Desktop Tools Compared, Search Engine Journal

SEM Industry

• 7 Ways to Boost Your SEO Career Profile, Search Engine Journal
• Liveblogging, Speaking Schedule for SMX East, outspokenmedia.com

SEO & SEM

• The merciless malignancy of malware Part 2 (SEM 101), Bing Webmaster Blog
• 3 Big Secrets To Leading The SEO Herd, SEO.com
• Corporate SEO Services, SEO Book

Social Media

• Study: Microbloggers are really boring, CNET News

Video, Music & Image Search

• Google Images China Shows Large Pics Inline, Google Blogoscoped

Web Analytics

• New Analytics API Features including Event Tracking!, Google Analytics Blog
• How to Export Google Analytics Data to Excel via the API, SEOmoz
• Integrate Phone Call Tracking and Google Analytics with Mongoose Metrics, Brad Geddes
• Omniture and comScore Announce Strategic Partner Relationship to Deliver Unified Digital Audience Measurement Service, comScore