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 Enhances Open Strategy: Mail, My Yahoo, Toolbar & More
Yahoo has announced several enhancements to their continued open strategy. Some of the updates revolve around Yahoo products including Yahoo Mail, My Yahoo, the Yahoo Toolbar and Yahoo Updates. - Newsknife Announces Top News Sites Of 2008
Newsknife, a site that every month rates the world’s top news sites for quality to help news sites improve their performance at Google News, has released its annual list of the most important news sites on Google news for the year. Rankings are compiled by the frequency of stories being included in Google news by a particular source. Newsknife’s top news sites of 2008 include: - Mahalo Answers Launches, Offers Cash For Q&A
Mahalo Answers is the newest entry into the crowded Q&A reference site space, but it offers a twist that its biggest competitors don’t: the chance to earn money by contributing to the service. Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis says the new service is the third and final piece of his original vision for Mahalo, making it a site that combines search, content, and knowledge exchanges. Yahoo Answers is the 800-lb. gorilla in this field, with some astonishing numbers reported earlier this year: 135 million users and 500 million answers worldwide, and growing at a rate of 11 million new answers per month just in the U.S. - Announcing Our Newest Conference: SMX Search Analytics
Search marketing isn’t just about website optimization and paid search campaigns. To really know if your efforts are paying off, you need to test, measure and refine on an ongoing basis. Analytics tools are key to these processes, providing you with invaluable information about your visitors, customers and even those that “got away.” Our newest show, SMX Search Analytics, focuses on the processes and tools that help you maximize the effectiveness of your search marketing campaign, and give you a leg up on your increasingly sophisticated competitors. Some search marketers have reported achieving conversion boosts of 25% or more after … - Getting The Most From Paid Search In A Difficult Economy, Part 2: Valuation Models
How much revenue does a new customer drive to your business? How long, on average, does a customer last, and how much do they spend as a customer? Do customers acquired through one marketing channel generate more revenue than those from another channel? The answers to these questions collectively make up the foundation of any direct marketing effort, and are especially important in paid search, where every click costs you money. These days you need to know the answers or you may quickly find yourself without a marketing budget. - SearchBiz: Google “Less Trusted,” Eric Schmidt On Meet The Press, Yahooligans “Vote” For New CEO, Microsoft Releases First iPhone App, Mobile To Be Primary Internet By 2020
The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that Google is negotiating with ISPs for “a fast lane for its own content” and is backing away from net neutrality. However, Google vigorously disputes this characterization and explains that instead it is seeking to “‘colocate” caching servers within broadband providers’ own facilities,” which has the practical effect of speeding up content delivery. Google argues that these relationships are non-exclusive and that the company “remains strongly committed to the principle of net neutrality.” - Google AdWords Gets Ready For Holidays With Special Dividers
Every year, Google dresses up the dividers between the organic search results and the paid search results with special holiday icons. This year is no different. David notified me that the special holiday dividers are now up. Every year, they do change up the icons they use, to give it an updated feel. Below, I will post screen captures for searches on Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, snowman, dreidel, and Chrismas tree. I am sure I am missing some. For the past years, see 2007, and 2006, 2005. - Google Search Suggest Get Ads, Links & Answers
Earlier this year, Google Suggest finally made it to the Google home page. The feature suggests queries as you begin typing in the search box. Now Google is testing providing links to web sites, direct answers and even ads that appear within the Google Suggest list. - Google Testing Enhanced Listings, “Pagelinks” & Auto-Spelling Correction
Google is testing a number of changes to its search results, including a way for select publishers to enhance their page descriptions, a way for searchers to jump to sub-sections of a web page and automatically correcting misspelled queries, to some degree.
Search News From Around The Web:
Applications & Portal Features
- Fast PDF viewing right in your browser, Official Gmail Blog
- Google’s Blogger Adds Geotagging Tool, InformationWeek
- Google Chrome Receives Lowest Password Security Score, Chapin Information Services
Business Issues
- Google Wins court ruling, Mercury News
- What Yahoo Should Do, blog maverick
- Microsoft Sales Vet Leaves, After Consolidation Post-Qi Lu Hire, AllThingsD
- Xunlei Joins Baidu Alliance In China, ChinaTechNews.com
- Yahoo Announces Next Steps in Open Strategy, TechCrunch
Local, Maps & Mobile
- Can Google Crack the Mobile Advertising Nut?, Technology News
- New Google Earth Imagery December 2008, Google Earth Blog
- Your Maps in Your Hands for the Holidays, Official Google Mobile Blog
Link Building
- Building Relationships is More Important Than Building Links Alone, Search Engine Journal
- All Relationships Are Not Created Equal, We Build Pages
- Link Building Ideas For Small Business, SEO Book
Paid Search & Contextual
- Cost Per Link Is A Bad Metric, Stone Temple
- No Phishing Here, Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog
- Display Advertising Works, But It Works Differently Than Search, www.avc.com
- Google Starts Blending Web And Shopping Search Results Again, TechCrunch
- MySpace MyAds After A Few Months, ShoeMoney
- Pause and Resume Ads and Keywords in adCenter, adCenter Blog for Advertisers
Searching
- The Future of Search, AltSearchEngines
- Q: What Do You Get When You Add Karate Belts To a Q&A, TechCrunch
- Google Blog Search loses its bearings, Wordyard
SEM Industry
- Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: December 14, 2008, Search Engine Roundtable
- Eric Enge interviews Yahoo’s Larry Cornett, Stone Temple
SEO & SEM
- Whiteboard Friday – The SEO Fundamentals Pyramid, SEOmoz
- Google cranks up the Consensus Engine, The Register
- 10 Ways I’ve Been Using Linkscape to Help Our SEO Projects, SEOmoz
- Free Keyword Research Tools – the Ultimate Guide, Search Engine Journal
- Google Malware Warnings Can Be Removed In 24 Hours, Search Engine Roundtable
- How to: Deoptimize Your Website, Search Engine Roundtable
- Live Search December 2008 Holiday Update?, Search Engine Roundtable
- What is Google’s Approach Toward Subdomains?, Search Engine Roundtable
- Search Traffic Growth Profile for New Websites, SEO Book
Social Media
- Razorfish files Patent to measure Social Media. What do you think?, Going Social Now
- Advertisers Face Hurdles on Social Networking Sites, New York Times
- So How Much Time Do You Waste On Twitter?, TechCrunch
- @Twitter: Welcome to Google Friend Connect, Official Google Blog
- Book of Tens: Ways to Monetize Twitter, Ad Age
Video, Music & Image Search
- Add as contact link, Code: Flickr Developer Blog
- Tis’ the Season: YouTube Greeting Cards Are Back!, YouTube Blog
Web Analytics
- Enable Google Analytics for your AdSense Account Now, Digital Inspiration
Other Items
- McCain’s Web Win, Technology Review
- Geek Love: Google exec Marissa Mayer engaged, Valleywag
Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:
- What is Social Media? In Plain English
- My First SEO Conference – SES Chicago review
- The Secret to Making Every Link Count For Your SEO Rankings
- Google Testing Enhanced Listings, “Pagelinks” & Auto-Spelling Correction
- Building Relationships is More Important Than Building Links Alone
- The SEO Fundamentals Pyramid
- Case Study – Profiling Landing Page Users
- 30 Web Trends for 2009
- Rarity of the Shared SEO Experiment
- Google Search Suggest Get Ads, Links & Answers
- Who Owns The Search Page?
- What’s in a Retweet? Data Behind Viral Messaging on Twitter
- 3 Reasons Why Blogs for SEO Fail
- 10 Rules for Digg Success from the Beatles
- Tracking Referrals from Second Page of Google in Google Analytics
- Block Web Content Scrapers and Downloaders – Net Builders
Related Topics: SearchCap
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