SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 8, 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:

• Hitwise: Google’s Lead Growing, Searches Getting Longer
  

  Google’s share of the U.S. search market continues to grow according to Hitwise data released today. (PDF download) Google’s market share rose from 72.11% in February to 72.39% in March, while both Yahoo and Live Search saw declines. Year-over-year numbers are also in Google’s favor: It’s up 8% over March 2008, while Yahoo and Live Search [...]

• Google Employee Alleged To Have Bypassed AdWords Trademark Policy For Own Benefit
  

  Well-known internet marketer Jeremy “ShoeMoney” Schoemaker has filed suit against Keyen Farrell, apparently a Google employee alleged to have used Schoemaker’s US-registered trademark in search ads on Google. While issues over trademarks in search ads are heating up, the bigger issue in the case is why Google itself didn’t take [...]

• Paris Hilton Is Top Twitter Search Celebrity
  

  I’m filing this one under “I don’t get it” — according to new Hitwise data, Paris Hilton is the most-searched celebrity on Twitter. Do that many people really want to find Paris Hilton? And follow her? The data covers searches done at search.twitter.com during the week that ended on March 21, 2009. Searches for the Twilight vampire [...]

• Paid Search: Building Brand Loyalty Two Seconds At A Time
  

  There’s no question that the vast majority of brand loyalty is created post click—once consumers are brought to a landing page with relevant offers and other brand messaging. However, what happens in that 2-3 second window prior to the click? A lot more brand building than you think. First impressions count Search marketers spend countless hours figuring [...]

• SEMPO Releases Survey Data Revealing State Of SEM
  

  SEMPO formally released data on the state of search engine marketing, its annual survey of agencies and marketers. This year’s survey consisted of 800 repsondents from all over the globle. However 68 percent of respondents were from the US, with 20 percent coming from a range of contries. Seven percent of respondents were from Canada [...]

• Google Image Search Adds Color Picker
  

  Google Operating System spotted a new feature on Google Image Search. The feature allows you to click on the color of images you want to be found, and Google will filter your query based on images that match the query and the color you selected. For example, I search on [flowers] and then chose the [...]

• Yahoo Announces March 2009 Search Update
  

  A little over a week ago we reported on the March ‘09 Yahoo Search update. Yahoo has finally confirmed the update with a weather report on the Yahoo Search Blog. Dan Rampton from Yahoo Search said: We’ll be rolling out some changes to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms over the next few days and expect [...]

• Singh Cassidy Departs Google For VC Firm
  

  Sukhinder Singh Cassidy is the latest high profile executive to leave Google, VentureBeat reports, to become a “CEO in residence” for VC firm Accel Partners. Her bio is still on the Google site. She had been serving as President, Asia-Pacific & Latin America Operations. However she was the first head of Local for Google in [...]

• Why Google Analytics May Not Be The Best Choice For B2B Marketers
  

  Most web analytics tools, including Google Analytics, attribute online conversions to the most recent visit. Sure, you can define the funnel and see how many people enter the funnel, the visitors who abandon the funnel, and how many people ultimately convert, but only if all of these events happen in a single visit. Conversion in [...]

• Yahoo Going Back To The Future Under Bartz
  

  Yahoo watchers have heard this before: The company is planning to “create community from isolated sites,” according to the headline of a Reuters feature Tuesday that includes comments from co-founder David Filo and VP of Social Platforms Neal Sample. It’s the idea of “social search” — creating value in the connections between users and relying on [...]

• Amid Tensions Google’s Eric Schmidt Addresses Newspaper Conference
  

  Google CEO Eric Schmidt addressed the Newspaper Association of America conference in San Diego this morning. It comes against the backdrop of the AP copyright controversy, rising tension between Google and newspapers and publisher frustrations with their own declining revenues. Some have accused Google of devaluing their content. Schmidt’s talk was generally sunny and upbeat especially [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• New features for App Engine announced at Campfire One, Google Code Blog
• New features and an early look at Java for App Engine, Official Google Blog

Business Issues

• NAQ: Does YouTube actually make any money?, The Guardian
• Google Data Center Video, Google Blogoscoped
• Tim Armstrong Starts at AOL–His Entire 100-Day-Countdown-To-Magic Memo!, AllThingsD by Kara Swisher
• Google Insists It’s a Friend to Newspapers, New York Times
• Google, a Non-Profit Organization?, Google Operating System
• Microsoft Faces Branding Problem In Effort to Top Google, Wall Street Journal

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google Local Search Fails to Understand How UK ISPs Work, ISPreview UK
• L’Aquila, Italy Earthquake Imagery, Google LatLong
• Live Search for Blackberry updated, LiveSide

Link Building

• How NOT to Request a Link Via Email, SEOmoz
• The Unhealthy Obsession With DoFollow Blog Links, DoshDosh
• Visualize Any Page Nofollow Attribute Usage, Daily SEO Tip

Paid Search & Contextual

• AdSense ups competitive ad filter to 500 for publishers, JenSense
• Right on Schedule, Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog
• AdWords Downtime: April 11, 10am-2pm PDT, AdWords API Blog
• Google Testing Larger Icons on AdWords in Japan, Search Engine Roundtable
• New AdWords Interface In Beta: See What’s New, Different and Better – Part 1, PPC Hero
• Q&A: A Few Things You Need to Know About Keyword Usage, Search Engine Guide
• Updates to AdWords conversion metrics, Inside AdWords
• When Are Conversions Attributed to Your PPC Campaigns?, PPC Hero

Searching

• Quintura Site Search Enchances Search Cloud View and Banner Insertion, Quintura blog
• Dictionary.com Launches Free iPhone App, TechCrunch
• Universal Search Gone Hog Wild, SEO.com

SEO & SEM

• Not PPC, Not SEO but Keyword Marketing, adCenter Blog for Advertisers
• Optimizing Your SEM Agency Relationship, Industrial Strength SEM
• SEO vs. Pay Per Click Advertising, Vertical Measures
• Heads or Tails? – How to Profit From Long Tail Keywords that Don’t Exist, www.wordstream.com
• SEO & Social Media Integration, Web Optimist
• What if Google provided annotations for every link on the Web?, SEO By The Sea

Social Media

• 200 Million Strong, Facebook
• Twitter backs first UK ad partner, NMA

Video, Music & Image Search

• YouTube Moving the Needle on Advertising Sales, Ad Age
• YouTube Quietly Rolls Out AdSense For Video To Claimed Copyrighted Content, TechCrunch

Web Analytics

• 40% still use old Google Analytics script, Royal Pingdom
• Does Google Analytics work with Web 2.0 and social media?, YouTube
• On RSS Subscriber Counts and FeedBurner Metrics, FeedBlitz News

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