SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 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:

• Google Skirts Around South Korea Law With YouTube
  

  PC World reports Google has disabled the ability for users to upload videos or comment on videos at YouTube Korea. Google made this move after South Korea passed a new law that requires sites with 100,000 unique visitors per day to require users to provide their real name and national ID card number before [...]

• Report: Yahoo Gains Marketers, Ad Share
  

  SEM tool provider AdGooroo today released a report that explores ad coverage per keyword among the big three engines in Q1 2009; it’s a hypothetical proxy for search revenues. The report concludes, among other things, that Yahoo has gained advertiser share and coverage (largely at Microsoft’s expense) during the quarter: The biggest surprise this quarter, however, [...]

• Survey: Search Marketers Underutilizing Sophisticated Metrics
  

  Dylan wrote, “When you ain’t got nothin’, you got nothing to lose,” but when you’re spending real dollars on search engine marketing you have plenty lose. And yet, according recent survey of 500 marketers, most search marketers still use the most basic metrics in evaluating the performance of their programs. How basic? While marketers picked conversion [...]

• Smart Bidding Requires Smart Ad Clusters
  

  Proper bidding requires smart, flexible data structures that allow keywords to be tagged with attributes. If bidding clusters and analysis are wedded to account structures you’re leaving opportunity on the table.

• FDA Cracks Down On Pharma Search Ads
  

  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has sent letters to a number of pharmaceutical manufacturers to alert them that they were in violation of acceptable marketing practices in relation to their paid search marketing campaigns. The basic gist of the letter is that when these pharmaceutical companies advertise on Google they are a.) not [...]

• Relating Gladwellian Concepts To Local Search
  

  Depending on whom you ask, the search industry is either reaching a tipping point, or it has already passed it. Online search is an unstoppable force, and there is no doubt that the platform for delivering results has changed and will continue to evolve as local search improves. The author who helped make the phrase “tipping [...]

• The Growth Of Framebars & Kevin Rose On The DiggBar
  

  The DiggBar has been out for about a week now. Since then, there continues to be concerns over twin issues of whether it robs sites of link love and frames their contents in a way that’s unfair to publishers. I had a good conversation with Digg cofounder Kevin Rose today about [...]

• In-house Search Pros – Attend In-house SEM Exchange@SMX Advanced June 4
  

  We’ve added a special day of programming for in-house SEM professionals to SMX Advanced this June. The In-house SEM Exchange workshop will be:

  100% in-house – all day, everywhere you turn, you’ll be immersed in the in-house community who understands your SEO and paid search challenges…and has solutions to share; interactive – it’s called “exchange” for a [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Google Health Records Reveal Grossly Inaccurate Info, InformationWeek
• Google Update Goes Open Source, Google Open Source Blog
• Google Update, Open Sourced, Google Operating System
• Making a PBX ‘botnet’ out of Skype or Google Voice?, Macworld

Business Issues

• Google in the middle, Rough Type
• How Google Stole Control Over Content Distribution By Stealing Links, Publishing 2.0
• Bloggers Be Warned: FTC May Monitor What You Say, Ad Age
• Blogspot Sued for Dead Blogger’s Content–Davis v. Google, Eric Goldman
• Google engineer chooses marriage, Metro
• Google machine put to test in first quarter, Reuters
• Microsoft Still On Track To Cut Another 3,600 Jobs, paidContent.org
• YouTube Korea Respects Privacy, Google Operating System

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google Releases Maps for Mobile Update to Resolve Bugs, Search Engine Roundtable

Paid Search & Contextual

• AdWords system maintenance canceled on Saturday, March 11th, Inside AdWords
• Google AdWords Conversion Metrics – We Need to Go Deeper, Ophir Cohen
• Ask.com Ad Quality Scores Alliances With “Anchor Intelligence” To Cut Click Fraud, ebrandz.com
• Pulling PPC Levers: Pause Poorly Performing Keywords, TechLINKS
• Yahoo’s New Local Targeting Feature Showing Poor Quality Traffic?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Your Yahoo Stats Weren’t That Bad This Weekend: Yahoo’s Reporting is Broken, PPC Hero

Searching

• Baidu Launches Search Site For Seniors, paidContent.org
• Google Japan Bug Showed Gibberish Results, Google Blogoscoped
• Another Local Victory for Google: Google.by, Profy
• Google Patent Application on How Users Can Add Pages to Search Results, SEO By The Sea
• Google Still Showing Different Results Based on Query Case, Search Engine Roundtable

SEM Industry

• Easter Logos From Search Engines But Not Google or Yahoo, Search Engine Roundtable
• Short Term Contracts Ease Recession Jitters & Inspire Client Confidence, AIM Clear Blog
• The NFL, Drug Abuse, Redemption, and SEO – The Tony Mandarich Story, Patrick Gavin

SEO & SEM

• 9 Semantic Search Engines That Will Change the World of Search, Search Engine Journal
• Are You Writing Your Headlines for Google or for Twitter?, louisgray.com
• Case Study Shows Pushed SEO Works Better Than Natural Site Development, Search Engine Roundtable
• Filing a DMCA Complaint to Google Gets Easy, Digital Inspiration
• How to Do Keyword Research for an Established Site, Search Engine Journal
• How to write articles that benefit your search engine rankings, Pandia
• Impossible SEO Tasks, SEO.com
• Most SEO Strategies Are Not Focused on Hitting Home Runs, SEO Book
• Perception, Not Reality, Could Topple Google in Search, Traffick
• What do I do after being hacked?, YouTube

Social Media

• AT&T uses Twitter during service outage, News.com
• Facebook Starts Recommending Branded Public Profiles, All Facebook
• How to Sell Your Soul on Twitter and Who’s Buying, Read/Write Web
• Warning: Twitter Hit By StalkDaily Worm, TechCrunch
• Wily Weekend Worms, Twitter Blog
• AOL, ESPN, Others Seek to Bypass Google with Address Bar Searching, Micro Persuasion
• Twazzup Takes On Twitter Search to Make Sense of Real-Time Web, louisgray.com

Video, Music & Image Search

• Author of Rickrolling song says Google ‘exploited’ him, News.com

Web Analytics

• Feed Stats Processing Caught Up, AdSense for Feeds

Other Items

• Google Hardware, https.50webs.com

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

• How to make money with SEO?
• The Digg Bar is Bad For SEO
• Graywolf, Matt Cutts, g1smd and Halfdeck discuss robots.txt disallow & meta noindex exclusion!
• What’s in the Digg toolbar code?
• Extortion SEO Sanctioned by Google
• IM Business Session at IM Spring Break – The Dream Team
• How Shana Albert Became A Social Media Phenom: An Interview With TheNanny612
• Digg Releases New Search Capabilities