SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 28, 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:

• Yahoo Adds Products, Businesses, Events, Discussions & News To SearchMonkey
  

  The Yahoo Search Blog announced the expansion of the SearchMonkey platform to not only include richer search results for categories such as Video, Documents, and Games but now also in the categories of Products, Local Businesses, Event, Discussions, or News. Here are some example search results that show off some of these features:

  We [...]

• 10 SEO Tips For Maximizing Facebook Visibility
  

  No discussion of social media’s effect on organic search results is complete without considering Facebook’s well-laid play for “search” domination, in a closed-loop-members-only end run around Google’s public algorithmic crawl. With 250 million users, the recent purchase of friendFeed and newly offered ability to search at macro and/or granular users’ network levels, Facebook’s internal community-search platform [...]

• Google Expanding Access To Wave Soon, First “Hands-On” Impressions
  

  At the end of next month, September 30, Google will expand the current “developer preview” of Google Wave to roughly 100,000 consumer users. According to Google, “included in this group of early testers will be some of the businesses using Google Apps.” In anticipation of this wider release, Danny and I got some time with Lars Rasmussen [...]

• Search In Pictures: Google Holy Water, Yahoo Frisbees & Celebrating Onam
  

  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. Google Holy Water: Yahoo Frisbees: What’s behind the wall? Google SMS Search in Nigeria: Yahoo Celebrates Onam:

• Two Months Later, Google Releases AdWords API v2009 (Beta) To All
  

  The Google AdWords API announced the new beta version of the AdWords API, i.e. API v2009, is available for all advertisers to give a try. Google first released the beta just about two months ago, as a limited beta. Now, any advertiser can sign up at this page. Note, there are significant changes and [...]

• 9 Problems With Paid Search, 9 Real Tactics To Solve Them
  

  A few years ago, I never would have been thinking about what Paid search wasn’t good for. Clicks were cheap, ROI was through the roof, and I was one of the biggest Paid Search evangelists out there. I attended an American Association of Advertising Agencies conference in 2007 where there was a session [...]

• Commercial Intent & Web Search Behaviors
  

  When do web searchers have commercial intent? What types of search queries do they try before actually making a purchase?

• Google Ties Street View To Local Business Listings
  

  If it sometimes seems that there’s no rhyme or reason to the various tools and products Google adds to its properties, this one will change your mind a bit: Google has (finally, some would say) brought together its local business listings with Street View inside of Google Maps. As the announcement explains, when looking for [...]

• The ASCII Version Of The Google Logo
  

  Google’s Marissa Mayer tweeted about Google’s official ASCII logo. The neat and geeky part is that the way you can see this Google ASCII logo is by searching in google for [ascii art]. Give it a try, and you will see the logo at the top left of the search box, that looks [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Business Issues

• AOL Hires Minson As Finance Chief, Wall Street Journal
• Microsoft’s secret ’screw Google’ meetings in D.C., DailyFinance
• Sergey Brin and Wife Anne Wojcicki Donate $500,000 to Creative Commons, Google Blogoscoped
• Unsettled: The PW Survey on the Google Book Settlement, Publishers Weekly

Paid Search & Contextual

• A Step in the Right Direction, Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog
• Calling all Canadians, Inside AdSense
• New Interface Thursdays: Tips for keyword management, Inside AdWords
• Poll: Google AdWords Roll Over Info, Search Engine Roundtable

Searching

• Hunting Deep-Sky Objects with Wolfram|Alpha, Wolfram|Alpha Blog
• SearchBastard: Must-Have FireFox Addon for Search Addicts, Search Engine Journal
• Using Personal Information to Improve Search Results and Other Innovators, ResourceShelf

SEM Industry

• Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: August 28, 2009, Search Engine Roundtable

SEO & SEM

• HTML 5 and SEO, blog.arhg.net
• Inheriting a Website That’s Been on a SEO Honeymoon, Search Engine Journal
• Integrated Search Marketing Video Presentation Pecha Kucha by Helen Trendell, Site Visibility
• New Set of Google Penalties & New Siteslinks, Search Engine Roundtable
• Results Are In: Is SEOMoz’s Ranking Factors Accurate? Mostly, Yes, Search Engine Roundtable
• Whiteboard Friday – Generating Unique Content, SEOmoz

Social Media

• Are we too worried with finding the ROI of social media?, The Viral Garden
• 4 Ways Any Business Can Benefit From Social Media, SEO.com
• A Look At Facebook’s Reach Worldwide, TechCrunch
• The Overwhelming Potential of Online Social Media, StepForth

Video, Music & Image Search

• A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words, Bing Search Blog