SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 21, 2012

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 Webmaster Tools Adds Clarity to Traffic Alerts: What To Do If You Receive One

  For some time (since at least March), Google webmaster tools has been sending messages to site owners about substantial traffic changes (increases or decreases) to pages of a site. Some site owners found these messages perplexing as they weren’t sure exactly what was actionable about the messages. Were the messages just informational, intended to help […]

• New whitepaper at Digital Marketing Depot – “Web Visitor & Lead Intelligence”

  Want to help your sales team win more often? Feed them more detailed information about your web visitors and leads. Discover what type of visitor and lead intelligence today’s sophisticated internet marketing software can deliver, and how to us that information for better sales results. Download this whitepaper to learn more. Download now!
• Should You Transliterate Your Brand For International SEO?

  A question which is hitting my desk on a daily basis at the moment is, “Should I transliterate my brand for greater success in China, Korea and the other double-byte countries?” The very first time I saw this I though, “I’ll just wing off a quick email to respond to this,” then discovered that my […]

• US Yellow Pages Publishers Merge To Form Entity Focused On Local-Digital Advertising

  Two of the major US yellow pages publishers and local search providers, DexOne and SuperMedia are merging in an all-stock transaction. After the merger closes, pending a shareholder vote, the combined entity will have 700,000 advertisers, 3,100 salespeople and revenues of roughly $3 billion. The merger was partly dictated by the need to accelerate the transition from traditional […]

• Search Week: August 20, 2012

  Search Week is an exclusive weekly newsletter for Search Engine Land premium members that recaps stories covered on Search Engine Land over the past week. Below are top stories organized by topic that happened over the past week. Each topic (or Search Engine Land column) is also a link, where you can click through and […]

• Industry Survey Underscores How The SEO Industry Relies On Google’s Free Tools

  If there’s one thing that stands out in the 2012 SEO Industry Survey, it’s that the SEO industry relies heavily on the free SEO-related tools that Google provides. SEOmoz released the results of its semi-annual survey today — a survey conducted between March and May that drew responses from almost 6,500 people in more than […]

Recent Headlines From MarTech, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

• New whitepaper at Digital Marketing Depot – “Web Visitor & Lead Intelligence”
• Gap Between Presidential Rivals Narrows In Online Display Ad Race
• How to Overcome the 5 Excuses That Will Kill Your Content Marketing Efforts
• Topsy Pro Analytics Lets Users Analyze Over 100 Billion Tweets From The Last 2+ Years
• The Shortest Distance From Data To Insights

Search News From Around The Web:

Business Issues

• Exclusive: Barry Diller’s IAC offers $300 million for About.com, Reuters
• Google Analytics Could Be Banned In Norway, TechCrunch
• Google, Facebook Working on India Request to Remove Content, Wall Street Journal
• This Week in MarissYa: iPhones for All, Flickr Love and Exec Changes, AllThingsD
• Trulia’s S1: Strong Focus on Monthly Fees, Mobile Monetization, blog.kelseygroup.com

Other Items

• Tech Confessional: The Googler Who Looked At The Worst Of The Internet, www.buzzfeed.com

Paid Search & Contextual

• How Facebook search ads change the competitive landscape for businesses, Inside Facebook
• DoubleClick Search gets UI, control, and transparency improvements with new Performance Bidding Suite, Inside AdWords

Searching

• Plagiarism, defamation and the power of hyperlinks, GigaOM
• Change the Top Google Search Result For Your Name for Free, mashable.com
• Google SERP Dumps 5.5% of Organic First Page Listings, www.wordstream.com
• Qihoo’s New Search Engine Passes Google to Place Second in China, thenextweb.com

SEM Industry

• At Some Point I Stopped Doing SEO and Started Management Consulting, www.distilled.net
• Covario Has a New Vice President of Global Client Strategies, www.internetretailer.com

SEO & SEM

• The Ultimate SEO KPI: Return On Rank, MediaPost
• 6 Quick PPC Insights, Fixes and Tests, PPC Hero
• E-Comm Websites: Step Up your Q4 Content Game (and Build Links, too!), www.seerinteractive.com
• Google Algorithm Changes Benefit Directory Sites at the Expense of Local Businesses, ClickZ
• SEO for Small Business Blogs: Introduction, Small Business SEM
• The Five Eyes of SEO Review, Search Engine Journal
• The SEO Project Management Jedi Challenge: May the seoPM Force Be With You, SEOmoz

Social Media

• 5 Ways that Social Media Impacts SEO, www.adamsherk.com

Web Analytics

• SEO, SEM & Analytics Insights, SEER Interactive
• How to Marry Google Analytics and PPC, acquisio.com
• Regex helps you search Google Analytics reports, VerticalLeap