SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 28, 2010

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 To Phase Out Old Keyword Tool In Exchange For New Version

  If you try to access Google’s external keyword tool, you may notice that you are sent to the new keyword tool Google began offering in September 2009. A Google spokesperson told me that they are now encouraging users to use the new tool over the old tool and have decided to direct a portion […]
• Report: Apple Buys Mobile Search App Siri

  Siri describes itself not as a “mobile search tool,” as I have in the headline, but rather as a “virtual personal assistant.” The company went public with its technology and iPhone app just a few months ago and now Apple has reportedly acquired it for an undisclosed sum that is likely more than $50 million […]

• Facebook Top Search Query At Google, Bing & Yahoo

  Guess what search term was the top search term at Google, Bing and Yahoo for the month of March? It was Facebook! Hitwise released data for the four weeks ending March 27th saying that across the three major search engines, the top query is the term [facebook].
  Of the search terms they tracked on Google, […]

• Eric Ward Moves To AdGooroo

  Few people have been building links professionally as long as Eric Ward. Long an independent, Eric is now joining AdGooroo as a “link evangelist.”
  From today’s press release:
  In his role as link evangelist, Ward will continue to improve Link Insight’s feature set and also interact with agencies and Link Insight subscribers. As he has […]

• Will New Changes To Google Places Help B2B Marketers?

  Recently, Google enhanced several features of its Local Business Center and rebranded it Google Places. Among the new features is an ability to specify the regions a business serves. But will the new changes help B2B marketers serving a larger region get found?
  Most B2B company locations serve a large region, and it can be challenging […]

• SEO Roadmap & Strategy: Getting Aligned With Product Development

  SEO roadmaps are very important for an in-house SEO. They are the basis for task prioritization, seeing how things fit into the grand scheme, and they give you a broad understanding of which projects you want to push. The best part is, you now have the ability to match up your roadmap to the product […]

• Yahoo: Search Local Menus For “BLT” Or “Hamachi”

  Yahoo is introducing a useful new capability in search and Yahoo Local: the ability to search for specific meals or menu items and find them at local bars and restaurants. Yahoo says it’s extracting unstructured data from restaurant menus online and making them searchable:
  By using Yahoo!’s search science to extract structured content – in this […]

• Known Issue With Google Sitemaps Index Count

  The Google Webmaster Central team posted a known issue report with a bug in the reporting engine within Google Webmaster Tools. The indexed URLs report is currently showing 0 pages indexed for most sites who have submitted sitemaps to Google Webmaster Tools.
  The notice reads:
  The indexed URL counts for Sitemaps that you have submitted in […]

• Microsoft Moves To Gain Licensing Royalties From Android

  The clever folks in Redmond (aided by their attorneys) appear to have found a way to gain “licensing revenue” from Android phones. That’s right. Android the OS is “free,” and that was seen, early on, as a competitive advantage vs. Windows Mobile, which had exacted a price of up to $15 dollars per unit from […]

• Be Careful When Your Affiliates Practice Link Cloaking

  If you run an affiliate program you may have noticed that some of your affiliates use a practice known as “link cloaking.” Link cloaking is a method used to make a long affiliate URL link into a shorter and prettier one—often to the detriment of a brand.
  One of the most common forms of link […]

• Google’s Place Pages Go Mobile

  Google has announced that its Place Pages now come in a mobile version. Users of Android-powered mobile devices and iPhone/iPod Touch users should be able to see the new mobile place pages now.
  They’re quite similar to what you’re used to seeing in Google Maps, with business/place information, a collection of reviews, images, and so forth. […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Google: Fake antivirus is 15 percent of all malware, CNET News
• Yahoo! News Hires Newsweek’s Former White House Correspondent Holly Bailey, businessinsider.com

Business Issues

• Yahoo Japan Profit Rises 25%, Wall Street Journal
• AOL’s Total Revenue Drops To $664 Million For The First Quarter, TechCrunch
• Google to invest 90,000 USD in Drupal (again), Dries Buytaert
• IAC’s Sales Up 16 Percent As Ask.com Rebounds, paidContent.org

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Facebook Offers Its Own Window Decals to SMBs, Screenwerk
• The Taste Of The iPad. UrbanSpoon Makes Its HD Debut, TechCrunch

Link Building

• Link Building Campaign Prep, huomah.com
• 3 Creative Ideas to Use Google for Link Building Search, Search Engine Journal
• Do URL Shorteners Break Links?, Site Visibility
• No More Link Begging: 4 Engagement Methods for Content-Based Link Building, Michael Gray

Paid Search & Contextual

• Bridging the gap: Branding campaigns, Inside AdSense
• Discover v2009: Error handling in BulkMutateJobService., AdWords API Blog
• When Will Google Deal With AdSense Issues On Their Cached Pages?, Search Engine Roundtable

Searching

• helping researchers uncover the secrets of search, Bing

SEM Industry

• Where My Hatred of SEO Comes From, shoemoney.com

SEO & SEM

• Advanced SEO Requires Good Analytics Information, Search Engine Journal
• 10 Reasons Not To Ignore Your Blog For Facebook, Small Business Trends
• 30 SEO Problems & the Tools to Solve Them (Part 2 of 2), SEOmoz
• Bing Updates Language Detection After One or Two Crawls, Search Engine Roundtable
• Build Links Locally: Strategies to Improve Local SEO, Search Engine Journal
• How does a user’s location affect search results?, YouTube
• Meet the Brands Hiding on Google, Ad Age
• The Tradeoffs of Exact Match Domain Names, Daily SEO Tip
• What the Hell is SEO Now Anyway?, AIM Clear Blog
• Why some SEO firms don’t employ copywriters, SEO Copywriting

Social Media

• An Open Letter to Facebook, Techipedia
• On the Twitter Patrol, New York Times
• PageRank For Twitter Launches – For a Fee, programmableweb.com

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

• A New Updated SEO Analysis Tool by SEO Workers
• 10 Commandments of Affiliate Marketing (infographic)
• The Secret to Effective Linkbaiting
• The Problem with Performing SEO in a Vacuum