SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 15, 2013

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web.

From Search Engine Land:

• 2013 Boston Marathon Explosion: Official Information Sources
  Following today’s explosions at the Boston Marathon, social media channels were immediately swamped with reports and graphic images, videos from the scene. Race officials immediately held runners on course, and canceled the rest of the event. During tragic events like this, it’s hard to determine what’s official & real information until it is verified by […]
• Study: Google Image Search Referrer Traffic Drops 63% Since Upgrade
  Define Media Group released statistics from 87 different web sites on the image the new Google Image Search design features have impacted publishers web sites. Overall, sites in the study saw an average decline of 63% of their traffic from Google Image Search. Industries hit the hardest, according to the report, were Fashion & Lifestyle, […]
• Study: Top Reason A User Would Block A Site From A Search? Too Many Ads
  An online survey examining SEO assumptions by SurveyMonkey found that the No. 1 reason users would block a website from their search results was if the website contained too many ads. If given an option to remove a website from future search results, 68 percent of the respondents said they would block a website because […]
• Study: Many Searchers Choose Google Over Bing Even When Google’s Name Is On Bing’s Results
  In a recent study by SurveyMonkey examining SEO assumptions, respondents were given two search result pages, one with a page header labeled “Google” and the other with a page header labeled “Bing,” and asked which page of results they preferred. Even when the page header labels were swapped, more users preferred the Google search results. […]
• Infographic: 26 Ideas For Split Testing Your Search Ads
  If you want to always be closing, then you need to always be testing, a long-standing mantra (and title of a popular book) in the search marketing space. When it comes to search ads, always be testing means trying out variations of ad copy to see which works best. Feeling like you’re out of ideas […]
• 14 Ways Facebook Homes In On Local Search
  With the announcement of Facebook Home, Facebook has pushed the accelerator on its local mobile strategy, which was already in high gear, thanks to Facebook Local Search and its big brother, Facebook Graph Search. By the end of 2013, I expect the social media giant to further strengthen its hold as the #2 local search […]
• Searching For Mobile Apps May Be In The Cards
  Mobile Application Search in both Apple’s App Store and Google Play is frustratingly similar to general online search in the early 2000s — and the tactics used to make them visible in search results also closely mirror the SEO best practices from that era. Searching for and discovering the right apps is a concern for […]
• Google Testing Sub (Secondary) Sitelinks
  The Google Operating System blog noticed Google is testing a new form of Sitelinks on the mobile interface. These new sitelinks are sub-sitelinks, secondary levels beyond the sitelink you’d find in the normal search interface. Sitelinks are designed to help searchers quickly find the section of the website they are trying to navigate toward. It […]
• Google Logo For Leonhard Euler’s 306th Birthday
  Google is honoring the life of Leonhard Euler, a renowned Swiss mathematician who is credited with founding the concepts of most modern math including the notion of a mathematical function. On April 15, 1707 – 306 years ago today – Leonhard Euler was born in Basel, Switzerland. Seventy-six years later, he died on September 18, […]
• 4 Simple Lessons To Make CPA Bidding Work For You
  I’m a huge fan of Google’s CPA bidding system. Setting bids is necessary; but merely setting them only leads to short-term progress. Your bidding work is only useful until the data changes, and then you have to set bids again. The maxim, “your data are only good until the data changes,” can be applied to […]
• Game Winning Tactics, Solutions & Networking At SMX Advanced, June 11-12
  March Madness. The World Cup. The Super Bowl. The best of the best meet, compete, show off their skills and elevate their performance to new levels. SMX Advanced is The Masters of search conferences. You’ll attend expert-only sessions, add to your all-star professional network, and contribute to industry-shaping discussions. Don’t miss the cut; register now. […]
• Google’s EU Antitrust Settlement Includes Labeling, Mandatory Competitive Links And Third Party Enforcement
  The proposed terms of the Google antitrust settlement in Europe have started to come to light, first through a report in the Financial Times, and this weekend, in articles from the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. As anticipated, the primary “remedy” Google is offering involves labeling its own results to distinguish them from third-party […]
• Desktop Search Activity Hits All-Time High In March: 20+ Billion Searches [comScore]
  Google dropped a few percentage points while Bing and Yahoo each gained a couple … but the bigger statistic from comScore’s monthly U.S. search rankings for March is that desktop search activity reached an all-time high. The company’s latest report estimates that there were just under 20.4 billion searches during March — that’s desktop-only, and […]

Recent Headlines From MarTech, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

• Battle Over Data: Disconnect 2 Lets Users Block Tracking On More Than 2,000 Websites
• Study: Content Popularity Impacts User Behavior On Facebook, Twitter & Google+
• AdSense Changes How It Calculates And Reports YouTube Earnings
• Kicking Third-Party Cookies To The Curb: The Fallout For The Digital Ad Industry
• How Soon Before Everybody Gets Twitter Music? #music

Search News From Around The Web:

Business Issues

• ‘Chinese Google’ Opens Artificial-Intelligence Lab in Silicon Valley, Wired
• Computer Security Legend Mudge Leaves DARPA for Google Job, AllThingsD
• Why Google – not Facebook – will Build the Database of Affinity, Forbes

Link Building

• Google Penguin And What It Affected, Daily SEO Tip
• 5 White-hat Link Building Methods For Local Businesses, Daily SEO Tip
• Will multiple internal links with the same anchor text hurt a site’s ranking?, YouTube

Other Items

• YouTube’s Tape Mode Easter Egg, Google Operating System

SEM Industry

• The Beal Deal with Michael Gray (@graywolf), Marketing Pilgrim
• Overcoming The Obstacles Of Going Solo, Bill Sebald

SEO & SEM

• Microsoft SEO Toolkit Review, koozai.com
• Search and Social Snippets: the Anatomy, internetmarketingninjas.com
• SEO Practices in 2013: Location, Links and Luck, Marketing Pilgrim
• Working With an Outside Developer: How to Make Your SEO Campaign Successful, Search Engine People