SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 13, 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:

• Novice or Expert: SMX East Program Has Sessions For You
  The Search Marketing Expo – SMX East agenda — featuring more than 50 sessions — is now posted. We’ve organized the program to make planning your conference experience easy. Sessions are grouped into themed tracks based on your area of interest such as the Paid Search Track, Brands Track and…
• Yahoo Gives Inquisitor, Mac Browser Plugin, First Upgrade
  The Yahoo Search Blog announced that they have released a new version of my favorite search browser plugin named Inquisitor. The upgrade makes the Apple Safari search plugin faster, cleaner, and multi-lingual. By faster, Yahoo has integrated Inquisitor with BOSS, enabling a faster return on your Yahoo queries. Yahoo has…
• What Are Search Blogs Talking About?
  Lee Odden wrote Word Visualization on Search Marketing Blogs, where he used a tool named Wordle to show what the search blogs are actually talking about. Wordle forms a tag cloud of the most used words and phrases on a particular blog. The neat part is that Wordle allows you…
• Google Consolidates “Places” On Earth, Will Fill In The Blanks On Maps
  Google is seeking to simplify and consolidate some of the multi-media content on Google Earth associated with particular places. Accordingly, it has created a “Places” layer that tries to bring together a variety of content on a single page about a place. A gray box, which Google likens to a…
• Bidding On Competitors’ Branded Terms: Moral Dilemma Or Business Decision?
  Admit it. You know you’ve thought about it. Yet you hesitate. Chances are, you’re probably conflicted, wondering if it’s morally right, or if you really want to “go there” – even if it is legal. Well, you’re not alone. Many search marketers grapple with this decision at one time…
• Key Takeaways From SMX Advanced For In-House SEMs
  Perhaps for the first time ever I’m guilty of being slack. Either that or I’ve been seriously buried (a condition I’m sure most in-house SEMs are quite familiar with). Although there was some great live blogging of SMX Advanced, nobody to my knowledge summarized key takeaways for in-house search…
• Yahoo’s Fire Eagle Location “Switchboard” Comes Out Of Private Beta
  Earlier today I was at the Brickhouse in San Francisco as Tom Coates, head of the Fire Eagle team, announced the release of Fire Eagle, which had been in private beta. The offering is intended to be something of a clearinghouse or “switchboard” (Coates’ words) to help users “manage location”…
• Link Development Realities Versus What We Tell Our Clients
  This week I’m seeking some feedback for a future column with a working title of “Link Development Realities Versus What We Tell Our Clients” The idea for this column came from a client conference call I participated in this past week. As the call progressed, it became more and…

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Google brings News to its Turkish users, Google News Blog
• Plot Feeds in Google Finance, Google Operating System
• Recent changes to improve the community experience, Live QnA

Business Issues

• Congress To Regulate Online Ads; Tomorrow SEO?, BruceClay.com
• Google Denied Attorney’s Fees in 230 Dismissal, Eric Goldman
• Yahoo Vets Two New Board Members, Wall Street Journal
• Ben Ling to Leave Facebook, AllThingsD
• Google Can Get Content Lesson the Old-School Way: Amity Shlaes, Bloomberg
• Lehman’s Online U.S. Advertising Forecast: Another $20 Billion In Growth By 2012 And Online Video Takes Off, TechCrunch

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google’s Street View captures the moment a drunken Aussie keeled over outside his home, Daily Mail
• How To Lifestream From Your iPhone, Read/Write Web
• Online Marketing Tips Video: Utilizing Yelp for Small Business Marketing, Search Marketing Gurus
• Poetry, community, and forty fabulous islands, Google LatLong
• Yahoo! oneSearch(TM) With Voice Now Available to Canadian Consumers, MarketWatch

Link Building

• How Much Do You Know About / Use Yahoo!’s Site Explorer and Link Data, SEOmoz
• Teaching Advanced Link Building and Why Pagerank Will Never Die, Gray Wolf

Paid Search & Contextual

• Follow Updates From The adCenter Blog On Twitter – adCenter Blog for Advertisers, adcentercommunity.com
• Google Shuts Down FeedBurner’s Ad Network (FAN), Search Engine Roundtable
• Video units more widely available, Inside AdSense
• Why Did My Google AdWords Destination URL Stop Working, Search Engine Roundtable

Searching

• Google Minus Google, Google Blogoscoped
• Google Shows PDF Info, Google Blogoscoped
• Hakia introduces the new hakia search box, altsearchengines.com
• The Future of Search? It’s Here., altsearchengines.com

SEM Industry

• Meet Cre8asiteforums Moderators "iamlost", Joe Dolson and Barry Welford, Cre8tive Flow
• SEMPO and Onward Search Partner to Increase Number of Search Engine Marketing Professionals, Bill Hartzer
• Today’s Search Marketers Deserve A Little More Respect, SEM Geek

SEO & SEM

• Farewell to soft 404s, Official Google Webmaster Central Blog
• How a Search Engine Might Handle Singular and Plural Queries, SEO By The Sea
• The End Is Here! No More SERP Reports?, Search Engine Guide
• Content? Content. Content!, Search Engine Watch
• Does Google Really Separate Paid from Organic? The AdWords Bill Test, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Not Bolding Keywords in Search Results in Some Cases?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Webmaster Tools Fixes 404 Reporting Error, Search Engine Roundtable
• Search Ad Tools Help Manage Complexity, Search Engine Watch
• When SEO & Usability Go Head To Head, Site Visibility
• Why Does My Homepage Not Rank for a Keyword, but an Inner Page Does?, Search Engine Roundtable
• You Have Great Content, But Are You Promoting It?, Small Business SEM

Social Media

• 3 Brands That Suck on Twitter, FaceReviews
• Facebook Is Not Only The World’s Largest Social Network, It Is Also The Fastest Growing, TechCrunch
• Facebook Users Get More Control Over Feeds, TechCrunch
• twitter: The Ham Radio (two way radio) of Today, The Jeff Pulver Blog

Other Items

• Flying car at the Googleplex, Valleywag
• Firefighters battle three-alarm fire at Apple’s Cupertino campus, Mercury News

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

• Word Visualization on Search Marketing Blogs
• The 10 Duplicatable Habits of Successful Diggers!
• Forget Community. Forget Conversation. Business Blogging Is About SEO.
• How to Rid Subpages & Avoid Penalty
• Really Boring Products That Rocked in Social Media
• Chatting with Chris Winfield: SES, Viral Marketing, and Desert Island Essentials
• URIs and Pascal Casing – A Study of Case
• How to Deal with the Problem Child in Your Adwords Campaign
• Social Media Free For All Pages
• Smart, Driven and Air Guitar Ready, Sugarrae
• How Much Might Your Website Be Worth?