SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 1, 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:

• Google Agrees To Pay $20 Million To Search Marketers Over AdWords “Daily Budget”
  

  MediaPost reports that Google has settled on a class action lawsuit brought by search marketers for exceeding the daily budget within the AdWords system. The settlement means Google can pay up to $20 million, including over $5 million to the plaintiff’s lawyers. The suit was over how Google allegedly charged advertisers 120% of their maximum [...]

• Google Showing Local Results On Non-Local Queries
  

  Google is rewriting the local search space. They’re now showing local search results — a map, business listings, and more — even when searchers use generic terms that don’t include a local word. This was spotted in London last week, written about on Saturday by a California florist, and spread widely yesterday when Mike Blumenthal [...]

• April Fools’ Day 2009: Google CADIE & More From Search Industry
  

  It is days like this I dread as a reporter. Today is April Fools Day, and you need to be on the lookout for what is real news and what is fake news. Below, a roundup of some of the April Fools hoaxes from the search industry, starting with Google. With Google, it all starts with [...]

• Cuil Launches Timeline To Search Results
  

  The Cuil Blog announced that for some queries, they will show a timeline box on the right column. For searches such as Abraham Lincoln, Alan Turing, Michael Jordan, Great Depression, Madison Square Garden and others, you may get a timeline. Let me show you how it works on the Great Depression search. At the [...]

• Google Mobile Evangelists Argue For “Best Practices” On Widely Read Publications
  

  Google developed and launched Android for a range of reasons, both selfish and “altruistic.” As I wrote at the time the G1 came out: It’s now almost a cliche to call mobile phones the most personal piece of technology. And it’s equally simplistic to point out that there are many times the number of mobile handsets [...]

• Direct Linking Affiliates: Nuisance Or Serious Problem?
  

  Most affiliate managers and brand owners agree that they are not fond of the practice where affiliate marketers direct link from a search campaign to the advertiser’s web site. While frowned upon, the practice may be simply a nuisance because you just don’t like it or could become a more serious problem that is costing [...]

• Search Community Outrage Builds Over Proposed New Match Types
  

  On the anniversary of Google’s revolutionary PigeonRank enhancement, rumors were flying today about the potential impending launch of three new match types within Google’s flagship advertising platform. Match type is a feature that allows advertisers to control ad delivery based on the relationship to the query string searched by a user. The [...]

• What If John Henry Managed B2B Paid Search Campaigns?
  

  According to the The Legend of John Henry, “Steel-drivin’ men like John Henry used large hammers and stakes to pound holes into the rock, which were then filled with explosives that would blast a cavity deeper and deeper into the mountain. In the folk ballads, the central event took place under such conditions. Eager to [...]

• Live Search Testing Icons In Sponsored Search Ads
  

  Here’s something you probably haven’t seen unless you’re a Microsoft employee:

  The screenshot above shows a Honda logo icon placed inside a Live Search sponsored search ad. It comes to us from a Search Engine Land reader doing search marketing in the auto industry, who explained how it happened: “I’ve been told by Microsoft reps [...]

• Yahoo Gets It Right: New Mobile Website, iPhone App Launch
  

  At the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona in February Yahoo announced “Yahoo Mobile,” a more integrated presentation of Yahoo’s mobile assets and a successor to the ineffectual Yahoo Go. Mobile represents a more coherent integration of what what had been a fragmented collection of mobile properties: oneSearch, Go, oneConnect and onePlace. This evening the new [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Gmail Labs goes global, Official Gmail Blog
• Typing in Indian Languages, Official Gmail Blog

Business Issues

• Introducing our European public policy blog, Google Public Policy Blog
• Welcome, Doug Bowman, Twitter Blog
• AOL Will Test New CEO Armstrong In Ways Google Didn’t, Wall Street Journal
• Guardian wants Government to look at Google News, PC Pro

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Networks In Motion To Launch First GPS App For BlackBerry App World, TechCrunch
• Mapping resources for the Red River Floods, Google LatLong
• MySpace’s Yelp Envy, Forbes
• A Green Light for Green Energy, Official Google.org Blog
• Google Maps Incredibly Slow? Troubleshoot Issues With Google, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Maps: Whitehouse Listing most recent Hijack Victim, Mike Blumenthal

Paid Search & Contextual

• Optimization Webinar tomorrow, Inside AdSense
• 6 Questions about Ad Optimization, Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog
• Funny & Sometimes Evil Google Ads, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Updates Search Query Report Functionality: Query Depth = All Queries, PPC Hero
• How Important is the Landing Page to AdWords Quality Score?, Brad Geddes
• UK & FR Advertisers – Download adCenter Desktop Beta & Set Your Defaults, adCenter Blog for Advertisers

Searching

• Compare Google Search Suggestions, Google Operating System
• UNESCO, Library of Congress and partners launch World Digital Library, ResourceShelf

SEM Industry

• Beachside SEO Conferences on the Horizon, BruceClay.com
• Webfluence: Move Over Big Three, SEOmoz Built a Better Search Engine, SEOmoz
• SEO Quiz: What Stage of Your SEO Career Are You at?, Search Engine Journal

SEO & SEM

• Data Quality tab now available for merchants in the UK and Germany, Google Base Blog
• Can I disallow crawling of my CSS and JavaScript files?, YouTube
• Discover New Promising Long Tail Based on Your Current Rankings, Daily SEO Tip
• How Long Should It Take To Rank Well in Google?, Search Engine Roundtable
• If You Don’t Rank, Did You Fail?, SEO Book
• Multiple Robots.txt Files for Single Domain, Search Engine Roundtable
• The Big, Bad List of Pre-SEO Questions You Need to Answer, Part VIII, Search Engine Guide
• Which is more important: content or links?, YouTube

Social Media

• Twitter To Kill Off The Auto-Follow, TechCrunch
• Social Media Influences, Online Marketing Blog
• Yahoo Launches Slick Desktop AIR App For Monitoring Twitter, TechCrunch

Web Analytics

• Marketing Optimization with Google Analytics, Google Analytics Blog
• Track Gmail Messages with Google Analytics, Digital Inspiration

Other Items

• Girls make a powerful noise, Yodel Anecdotal
• Google’s Larry Page building eco-friendly compound in Palo Alto, Mercury News
• Police ID victims in Santa Clara murder-suicide, San Francisco Chronicle

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