SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 14, 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:

• Google Adds More User Photos to Street View
  

  Google is now adding public geotagged Picasa images to Google’s Street View on Maps. According to the Google Lat Long Blog: Millions of people already rely on Picasa Web Albums to share their photographs with friends and the internet community. Now, their public geo-tagged photos will help Google Maps users to get a better impression of [...]

• Hitwise Report: Bing Shopping On Rise Following Double Cashback
  

  Hitwise is reporting that Bing Shopping moved up to 4th place (from 8th) in the comparision shopping tools category last week, rising to 11% weekly market share. Combining the recent Double Cashback offer from retailers listed on Bing Shopping and the fortunate timing of the annual Back-to-School shopping rush has moved their weekly market share [...]

• Yahoo Search Ad Pricing Changes Coming Soon
  

  I just received an email from the Yahoo Search Marketing team that discusses how they will be changing the pricing model for search ads run through them. It is not 100% clear to me exactly how this will work, so I will cut and paste the email below and follow up with Yahoo to [...]

• Report: MicroHoo “Penetration” Near Google’s, Google Users Most “Loyal”
  

  This morning comScore released data and analysis that compares search share, searcher penetration and loyalty at the combined Microsoft-Yahoo property vs. Google. While Google has a much higher share of the number of searches conducted in the US in a given month, the searcher “penetration” for MicroHoo is almost that of Google. The chart immediately below [...]

• Google Calls Yahoo-Microsoft’s Explanation Of Search Scale “Bogus”
  

  One thing Microsoft and Yahoo were touting as a major advantage to them teaming up, is that their search scale will grow tremendously. The benefit of the search scale, or search volume query, growing is that Microsoft and Yahoo will have more data to analyze and use in order to compete against Google. News.com interviewed [...]

• Google’s Next Doodle, Hans Christian Ørsted Birthday
  

  Google’s home page is featuring a Google Doodle for the birthday of Hans Christian Ørsted, who was born today on 1777. He is known for figuring out that a magnetic field can be induced by electric currents. In other words, he noticed that an electric current can make a compass needle move to [...]

• Bizmore: Like Yahoo Answers For Small Business
  

  There’s no shortage of web sites online offering help for small business owners. Heck, Search Engine Land’s Small Is Beautiful column does it, I do it both here and on my Small Business Search Marketing blog, and there are countless other blogs and sites with advice for the SMB market. But what if a small [...]

• The Importance Of Knowing Your Customers’ Language
  

  While doing keyword research for a company, I started to think about something that has always been in front of me. Where usually I think in terms of “trigger words” such as “sale”, “free” and “limited time offer,” I realized there is another layer to the wording we use to communicate to customers and [...]

• SES San Jose Day Three Live Blog Coverage
  

  Today is day three of three of the SES San Jose show. The sessions are now complete for the day and I believe I have complied a lot of the live blogging sessions. If I missed any, feel free to comment below. Here is some of the coverage for day one:

  Advanced Paid [...]

• New to Search Engine Marketing? Your SMX East Dream Agenda
  

  Need to get up to speed fast on search engine marketing? Here’s your “dream agenda” for Search Marketing Expo – SMX East (October 5-7 in NYC). By following this agenda, you’ll get a comprehensive introduction to Search Engine Marketing, and maximize your investment in money and time, We highly recommend that beginners attend all of the [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Business Issues

• Benchmark took “almost all equity” with FriendFeed sale to Facebook | VentureBeat, VentureBeat
• The problem with the AP’s plan to goose its Googlejuice, Reuters
• Bing’s Cashback Rewards A Big Hassle for Microsoft?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Flowbee Latest Trademark Owner to Sue Google–Flowbee v. Google, Eric Goldman

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google Details LBC “Whitelist” Bulk Upload at LSS Q, Mihmorandum
• Google Thinks All New Yorkers Who Fly Into JFK Are Arab, Valleywag
• Top Dog IYPs And Bad Dog Google LBC, Search Engine Guide
• Get Bulk Uploads Verified in Google Maps Local Business Center, Mike Blumenthal
• Google Maps inadvertently steps into political mine field & back out again, Mike Blumenthal

Link Building

• Website Optimizer Tricks: Tracking Outbound Links, The Right Way
• Whiteboard Friday – Matt Cutts on NoFollow, SEOmoz

Paid Search & Contextual

• New Interface Thursdays: Best practices for location extensions, Inside AdWords
• Google Puts Movie Previews Into Search Ads in Bid for New Sales, Bloomberg
• New Search Ads Quality Guide Available, Inside AdWords

Searching

• Web Resources: Free Legal Documents (Recap and Open Jurist), ResourceShelf

SEO & SEM

• Google Caffeine SEO Notes, John Andrews
• Caffeine Update Affects Local Organic Results, StepForth

Social Media

• Project Retweet: Phase One, Official Twitter Blog
• Watch Online: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone Interviewed on PBS, ResourceShelf

Video, Music & Image Search

• A Sad Day. Goodbye, Riya, TechCrunch

Web Analytics

• Look Inside a 1,024 Recipe Multivariate Experiment, YouTube Blog