SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 1, 2008

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

From Search Engine Land:

• Yahoo Maps Now With Better Search Integration & New Features
  Yahoo announced that they have added some features to Yahoo Maps. The main improvements include better local search integration, usability enhancements, and printable view changes. Here is the full list of features:…
• Search In Pictures: Yahoo Basketball, Google Cube & Yahoo’s Variety Show
  In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more….
• The Mother Of All SMX Local/Mobile Recaps
  Did you miss our SMX Local & Mobile show in San Francisco last week? If so, no worries, as David Mihm has an excellent roundup of the highlights of the conference. Even though I’m obviously biased, I have to say the event was one of the best I’ve had the…
• SEM News, The Ultimate Guide To Search Marketing Optimization Part 3 & The Top Marketing Words Of All Time
  In The Trenches is a weekly spotlight of tips, tricks, and news about the tools search engine marketing professionals use to give them a leg up on the competition. Today: News from the search engines, today’s in-depth look, The Ultimate Guide to Search Marketing Optimization Part 3 – Self-Service…
• Google AdWords Dropping Average Position From Content Network?
  PPC Hero noticed that Google has applied “N/A” (not available) to all the columns within the content network that are for the “average position” of your ad. Here is a screen capture:…
• Google Brings Public Transit Directions To Symbian, Windows Mobile Phones
  Google has added access to public transit directions for Symbian S60 and Windows Mobile phones through its Google Maps for Mobile client application. Recently the company made them available for BlackBerry and Java-based mobile phones. (Here’s a video that shows how it works on mobile handsets.) Google Transit has public…
• Yahoo! SearchMonkey Becomes More Mainstream
  Earlier this year, when I wrote about Yahoo! SearchMonkey, which enables developers to build search result enhancements based on semantic web data, I was skeptical that it would fulfill Yahoo!’s stated aims of encouraging wider use of semantic web standards. While I agreed with Yahoo! that site owners need a…

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Feedly Now Integrates With Google Search, Read/Write Web
• Gmail update coming? Integration of voicemail, Flickr
• Google Reader Adds the Blogs You Follow in Blogger, Google Operating System

Business Issues

• Microsoft discloses Google, Apple threat, plus Danger sale pric, Brier Dudley’s blog
• Response to Wall Street Journal article of July 22, The Icahn Report
• As Its Holders Meet, Yahoo Taps New Ads, Wall Street Journal
• Yahoo! Po Ruski, Quintura blog

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Don’t Like Microsoft Virtual Earth Imagery? Then, "Patch" It., Virtual Earth, An Evangelist’s Blog
• Tip of the week: Getting where you need to go, Google LatLong
• Has Mobile Local Search Finally Arrived?, Search Engine Watch
• Google LatLong: Olympic imagery update, Google LatLong

Paid Search & Contextual

• Bookmark the adCenter Help topics you use most – adCenter Blog for Advertisers, www.adcentercommunity.com
• Dissecting the Google AdWords Quality Score: See How it Actually Affects Your Account, PPC Hero
• Upcoming Reports Changes: August 19, AdWords API Blog
• PPC Bid Optimization Platforms: The Perils Of Inflexibility and Extremism, Rimm Kaufman
• A picture isn’t always worth a thousand words, Inside AdSense
• Did Yahoo Fix the Publisher Reports?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google AdSense Ads in RSS Feeds – First Impressions , Digital Inspiration
• How To Grow Your PPC Campaign Organically, PPC Hero

Searching

• Cuil Stats – The Early Numbers, Hitwise
• How Using Categories for Queries Can Help Searchers, Writers, and Search Engines, SEO By The Sea
• Google Alerts experimenting with tags?, Andrew R H Girdwood
• Google in your language, Official Google Blog
• Official Google Blog: Search quality, continued, Official Google Blog

SEM Industry

• Honk If You Love Search Engine Marketing Women, Cre8PC
• AdWordsAdvisor Is Taking A Two Month Leave From Google, Search Engine Roundtable
• SEMPO Guide To Rome: Massimo Burgio, Smart Keywords

SEO & SEM

• Don’t use Robots.txt to control indexing, JLH Design Blog
• Look Out PageRank, There’s a New Algorithm in Town, Search Engine Watch
• Whiteboard Friday – Why Linkbuilding and Landing Pages Don’t Mix, SEOmoz
• XML Sitemaps, guidelines on their use, SEOmoz

Social Media

• Big Change in Protected-User Model, Twitter Blog
• Digg Recommendation Engine Updates, Digg the Blog
• How Social Media Helped Me Get Unbanned from a Social Media Site in One Hour and 44 Minutes, ProBlogger
• ProBlogger is Banned from StumbleUpon, ProBlogger
• Social Media Marketing? Not in Columbus (or Social Media Isn’t a Free Pass to a Good Campaign), Search Engine Guide

Video, Music & Image Search

• Google to compete with Baidu in MP3, Xinhua
• The YouTube Screening Room: New Features, New Films, YouTube Blog

Web Analytics

• Clicky Web Analytics Improves API and Adds More Features, Jason Bartholme
• Google Analytics Has Several Bugs You Should Know About, Search Engine Roundtable
• Holy Bazooka, Google Changed the Favicon for Google Analytics!, Arthur Freydin

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

• Introducing the New Google Products Performance Dashboard
• Honk If You Love Search Engine Marketing Women
• ProBlogger is Banned from StumbleUpon
• Where in the World is the SEO Talent? Part 2
• The Key to Effective Viral Marketing is Emotional Engagement
• How To Get New Web Sites To Rank Quickly