SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 2, 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:

• OneRiot Offers Twitter Search … With a Twist
  

  Whenever the subject of real-time search and/or Twitter search comes up, someone inevitably argues that there’s too much noise to make it worthwhile; there are too many random conversations and meaningless chatter to find anything of value. It’s a generally fair argument. But one company thinks it’s found a way to cut through some of [...]

• Microsoft To Throw $100 Million At Their Search Market Share Problem
  

  AdvertisingAge reports Microsoft is going to spend between $80 and $100 million in an effort to take market share away from Google and Yahoo in the search space. Microsoft has had a tough time branding their search portal, they even mocked their own attempts yesterday, on

• How To Optimize Your Page Titles For Singular & Plural Terms
  

  Most SEOs will agree that the title element is your strongest on-page element, and optimizing the title is critical for rankings and traffic. However when the keyword or phrase you are targeting has both a singular and plural version, many people have a difficult time optimizing for both. Novices decide to create a page for [...]

• Twitter Embraces Its Inner Search Engine
  

  Twitter is a search engine after all — or make that a “discovery engine.” The folks at Twitter are saying that the experiment with integrating a search box into Twitter pages will rolled out with some interesting twists and new dimensions. It won’t be at the top of the page, but rather on the sidebar: Currently, [...]

• The Online Opportunity For Radio Stations
  

  In continuing with my theme of online opportunities for local media companies, I thought I would explore market dynamics within the online radio sector for this post. According to Borrell Associates, local online advertising is expected to grow at 8% this year while broadcast radio advertising dollars are forecasted to contract by 15.1%. As with [...]

• Behind The Curtain With Google’s “Secret Servers”
  

  For all the uber-geeks and electrical engineers, CNET offers an interesting story about Google’s approach to servers. From the very early days Google was thinking carefully about scale, efficiency but perhaps mostabout cost savings. Rather than buy servers, Google has built them from the beginning. Google finally revealed one of its home-made servers before an [...]

• Google Expands Google Suggest & Local News
  

  I wrote yesterday about expanded local search results on Google.com, and today there are two other local expansions from Google worth talking about. First is the announcement that Google Suggest has been launched internationally, and with it the search suggestions have been localized for local and cultural factors. The prime example Google shares is a search [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Gmail’s Keith Coleman Talks Five Years of Gmail and What’s to Come – Exclusive Lifehacker Interview Google Email, Lifehacker
• Suggestion for the Google Gadget Directory, SEOish

Business Issues

• A Sign of Slowing Search Ad Spending, BusinessWeek
• Ex-Chief of AOL to Oversee MySpace, New York Times

Local, Maps & Mobile

• New Google Earth 5 Plugin Released, Google Earth Blog
• Google Local Business Center Not Functioning For Many, Search Engine Roundtable
• Tracking federal spending on Google Maps, Google Public Policy Blog

Link Building

• Could Twitter Cannibalize the Web’s Link Graph, SEOmoz

Paid Search & Contextual

• Ad Scheduling: it’s all about timing, AdWords API Blog
• Google Analytics Not Tracking AdWords Data Properly? Link Accounts, Search Engine Roundtable
• New Seminars for Success videos, Inside AdWords

Searching

• Kumo traffic spotted in the wild, BigMouthMedia
• New in Labs: Gmail search made easier (and lazier), Official Gmail Blog

SEM Industry

• Matt Cutts Is Representative Of Next Generation PR, thefuturebuzz.com

SEO & SEM

• 25 SEO tips to create trust with the search engines, Econsultancy
• A Match Made in Heaven: CSS & SEO, SEO.com
• April Fools Google PageRank Update, Search Engine Roundtable
• Is excessive whitespace in the HTML source bad?, YouTube
• See Google "Classic" Sitelinks In Action (One Line Sitelinks), Search Engine Roundtable
• The Big SEO Copywriting Secret: Quality Content That Converts, Search Engine People
• Three Easy Ways to Geotarget Your Search Results, outspokenmedia.com

Social Media

• DiggBar Is Here. Go Shorten Those URLs, TechCrunch
• The Best Niche Social Media News Sites Right Now, 10e20 Blog
• The Secret Behind Twitter’s Growth, Technology Review
• Twitter Contests and Incentives – Do they Work, Michael Gray

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

• 61 Pre-SEO Campaign Questions You Need To Answer
• Is Guy Kawasaki Singlehandedly Ruining Twitter?
• The Best Niche Social Media News Sites Right Now
• Twitter: Incredibly Valuable Or Utterly Useless As A Link Building Tool?