SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 21, 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:

• When Keyword Research and Search Data Deceives
  As search engine optimization (SEO) professionals, we obsess with search data from a wide variety of resources. Which one is best for our clients? Which keyword research tool reveals the most accurate search behaviors when rebuilding a site’s information architecture? Does our web analytics data validate our keyword research?…
• Yahoo Adds New Site Stats As Part of Site Explorer Redesign
  The Yahoo Search Blog announced that they are testing out a new design for Site Explorer plus offering a variety of new stats about web sites….
• Small Businesses, Conversion Rates, and Online Video: A Good Mix?
  Can using online video adverting get your small business to quintuple traditional search engine marketing conversion rates? How about increase them sixteen-fold? While it would be irresponsible for anyone to promise results like these, there are some very interesting early indications in the marketplace about the benefits that integrating…
• Yahoo Search Launches iPhone Safari Version
  Yahoo has built a mobile Safari version of Yahoo Search for the iPhone. Ryan Grove, a Yahoo developer, blogged about the experiencing of building out the application. In short, the mobile Safari version gives you almost all of the features the normal Yahoo Search gives you, but with fewer ads…
• Making The Business Case For SEO
  So what’s the ROI on this SEO program you’re recommending? How much revenue upside is there? What will it cost? How does this stack up against the fourteen other projects we’re working on right now? Are these questions familiar to you? They are to me. I hear them in…
• Microsoft & Yahoo Shuffle Business Internally
  While Microsoft and Yahoo move further apart from creating Microhoo, they both continue to make changes internally with the intention of building out a better search company….
• The Case For Speech-to-Text Analysis In Multimedia Content Discovery
  There have been several recent announcements surrounding the application of speech-to-text analysis in consumer search settings. Google announced its Political Gadget, enabling visitors to search the spoken word of content within YouTube Presidential candidate’s channels. Adobe plans to include speech-to-text features in future versions of its video authoring applications,…
• Day Three: SES San Jose ‘08 Recap
  Day three of the Search Engine Strategies San Jose show is now over. Below is a recap of all the blog posts that I have found, covering the day’s sessions, news and activities:…
• An Overlooked Niche: Marketing To Hispanics Online
  There is no doubt Hispanics are online. And for most of them, the Internet is about connecting with their friends and family and keeping in touch with the latest happenings in their world. However, advertisers have fallen short in actively targeting this portion of the population, in particular with search…
• Microsoft’s Photosyth Opens To The Public
  Microsoft’s Photosyth is transforming from a Microsoft Live Labs experiment, featured on the BBC’s “How We Built Britain” television series and in select other rarefied contexts, to a what can only be described as “totally cool” consumer application….
• What If It Isn’t Linkworthy?
  Some client scenarios can be uncomfortable. Among them is when the client has worked especially hard to create a content area that they feel is linkworthy, and thus should attract links, but you, as the person who has to go get those links, aren’t quite as enthusiastic about the…
• How to Adopt a Pro-SEO Culture at your Company
  The most successful SEO programs aren’t solely the result of a great SEO team. They happen because the entire company incorporates SEO into their portion of a given project, and everyone recognizes when it’s time to bring in the SEO to discussions. Establishing this level of SEO buy-in throughout…

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• News without borders: search results across languages, Google News Blog

Business Issues

• Yahoo! to sponsor Filipino developer to Silicon Valley, INQUIRER.net

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Map of champions, Google LatLong
• Discover Yahoo! oneSearch in One Click on Nokia Devices, Yahoo Search Blog
• Google.org Visualizes US Geothermal Data in Google Earth, Google Earth Blog
• Googlephone security team seeks bug hunters, The Register

Link Building

• 6 Ways to Get Nearly Instant Links to your Web Site, Bill Hartzer
• Linking Still Matters, Twist Image

Paid Search & Contextual

• adCenter August upgrade: reporting updates – adCenter Blog for Advertisers, adcentercommunity.com
• AdWords system maintenance on August 23rd, Inside AdWords
• Google Content Network Enhancements, Serengeti Communications
• Google Releases Major Update to AdWords API Java Library, Search Engine Roundtable
• Organizing Ad Groups for Success, Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog

Searching

• CitySquares.com is Fastest Growing Search Site, Search Engine Watch Blog
• NBC’s Olympic Fool’s Gold; Google Comes Home Empty-Handed, Search Engine Watch

SEM Industry

• Internet Marketing Conference Tips: Heather Lloyd-Martin, Online Marketing Blog
• Pierre Far: Search Blogger of the Day, The SEO Scoop

SEO & SEM

• A Rejection Letter from Google News, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Fixes 404 Widget Scripting Errors, Search Engine Roundtable
• Upset over PageRank and Google Update, Dave rants about the changes made to PageRank and a recent Google update, WebMasterRadio.fm

Social Media

• How a Business Could Use Friendfeed For Collaboration, mashable.com
• LinkedIn: A New Must-Have App For iPhone, Read/Write Web
• Spotted: FriendFeed Beta – coming soon, VentureBeat

Video, Music & Image Search

• Hulu Getting Ready To Go International, GigaOM
• Flickr Releases Handy Embeddable Slide Show, Read/Write Web

Other Items

• The Ad Changes With the Shopper In Front of It, Wall Street Journal
• Back-to-School savings now in session, Official Google Checkout Blog

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