SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 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:

• Hoping To Improve People Search, Google Launches “Profile Results”
  

  Ever searched for yourself on Google and come away dissatisfied, especially if someone else you share a name with seems to dominate the results? Ever looked for someone else and been disappointed that you couldn’t find the person you wanted? Google’s new “Profile Results” launching today aim to correct both problems. Since [...]

• Microsoft “Sift”: Microsoft’s New Mobile Search Brand?
  

  paidContent reports Microsoft has registered a new trademark for the term, “Sift.” The trademark filing describes the name as: Operating system software for mobile phones; computer search engine software; computer programs for searching email, text messages, address and contact information It was filed on January 9th and can possibly be used as the mobile search brand [...]

• South Korean May Take Legal Action Over Google’s YouTube Law Loophole
  

  paidContent reports South Korean officials are not happy with how Google skirted around their law to continue to allow YouTube to operate in Korea by simply turning off video comments and upload ability in that country. South Korea passed a new law requiring sites with 100,000 unique visitors per day to require users to provide their [...]

• Report: Yahoo Top Search Performer On Mobile Web
  

  Gomez, Inc. and dotMobi have joined together to rate mobile sites across several verticals according to how well they perform on the mobile internet. The criteria and ranking methodology used included the following benchmarks:

  Discoverability – how readily a consumer can find the mobile Web site using different URLs. Readiness – how well the mobile Web site [...]

• Healthline Adds New Doctor, Treatment Search Tools To Site
  

  The American healthcare system is very broken, in my opinion and in the opinion of many others. Health insurance carriers and providers hold almost all the cards. However the internet has gone a long way to arm consumers with information and help them become more sophisticated about their conditions and treatment options. And while the [...]

• Gmail, Google Maps Among Fastest-Rising Google Properties
  

  Gmail and Google Maps are two of Google’s hottest properties, while YouTube and Google Image Search are falling on the list of the most popular Google properties. That’s according to Hitwise data that tracked U.S. visits to Google sites during the month of March:

  Gmail is the big winner here, surpassing YouTube as the number [...]

• Link Building & The Blurring Of Brand Identity
  

  Is link building becoming harder as brand identities become more blurred on social media sites? Go search for a big brand on Facebook and try, in less than 5 seconds, to correctly identify the official brand page. Try to determine whether a Twitterer is the “real” one you want to follow. It’s not that simple anymore. As [...]

• Showing Off “The Innovation Machine” At Google
  

  Google is almost uniquely situated among tech companies in that it can reveal very little about an event or announcement and be all but guaranteed that most of the journalists and bloggers on the tech beat in Northern California will show up to cover it. That’s what happened today. Google brought bloggers and journalists into [...]

• How To Optimize When You Have Long Sales Cycles
  

  When I speak to lead generation marketers at conferences and shows, the first thing I tell them is to get beyond a Cost Per Lead (CPL) metric and to tie their closed deals back to the lead and back to the ads that produced the lead. Once they’re able to do this, they can then [...]

• Google News Timeline Offers Powerful Search Options
  

  In addition to the new similar image search, Google has also announced the addition of Google News Timeline as a Google Labs experimental service. Google News Timeline is what it sounds like — a tool that lets you see news coverage over a period of time. A search for “somali pirates” showing weekly coverage looks like [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Now moving to Google Sites, The Google Apps Blog

Business Issues

• Blo.gs moves to Automattic, toni.org
• Google, AT&T and Twitter executives visit Iraq, Reuters
• Should Google pay a tax to media corporations?, Wordyard
• Yahoo’s Bartz Tells Balogh to Tear Down Product ‘Wall of Shame’, Bloomberg

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google joins effort for 3D Web standard with new plugin, API, Ars Technica
• Google Local Search, Categories, and the What and Where of Local Map Listings, SEO By The Sea

Link Building

Paid Search & Contextual

• From blues to blooms with Blue Dart, Inside AdSense
• Rational vs Irrational Behavior in PPC, Rimm Kaufman
• Google releases whitepaper on the content network’s effectiveness, Brad Geddes
• Search-based Keyword Tool: Wider availability and improvements, Inside AdWords

Searching

• Brand Mentions Preferred over Ads, eMarketer
• Top Search Technology Proposals in the Yahoo! Key Scientific Challenges, Yahoo Search Blog

SEM Industry

• SEO Since 1999, SEOmoz

SEO & SEM

• Organic v. Paid Results – Different Searches = Different Biases, HyperArts
• Polish spam takes over Google, BlogStorm
• 8 Tips for Choosing an SEO Professional, Practical eCommerce
• What Does The Gray Google PageRank Bar Mean?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Working words: How to write for SEO, Econsultancy

Social Media

• A note about per day following limits, Twitter Status
• How Huge Sites like CNN.com & Digg Are Integrating Twitter, Search Engine Journal
• Interview With Digg’s Kevin Rose: The State of The Union, TechCrunch
• KnowEm.com Launches : Check & Register Usernames on 100 Social Media Sites, Search Engine Journal
• Oprah Effect on Twitter, Hitwise
• Pushed By Celebrities, Twitter Is Poised To Double Its Monthly Traffic Once Again, TechCrunch

Video, Music & Image Search

• Tweeting Picnik Photos Now Simple with Twitgoo, Read/Write Web
• YouTube’s Featured Search Results, Google Operating System

Web Analytics

• Omniture Adds New Tool for YouTube, Viral Video Monitoring, eWeek
• Tracking YouTube Videos with Google Analytics, Analytics Talk

Other Items

• Time For Google To Fund An Online-Only Version Of The Pulitzers?, daggle.com

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