SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 17, 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 SVP Rosenberg’s Tome On Social Challenges, The Internet And Google’s Future
  

  Google’s SVP of Product Management Jonathan Rosenberg posted yesterday on the Google Blog, turning an internal memo into a public article. He used the occasion of the US President’s Day holiday to discuss Google’s sense of the political and social challenges of the moment as well as a vision for the future of search and [...]

• GoogleBot Art
  

  A digital artist named Antonio Lizarazu Balué has created a piece he named GoogleBot. I spotted this via a Matt Cutts Twitter. Here is a low res of the art, but you can see them in better quality at this site.

• Yahoo Sued For Showing Spam Pages About Beverly
  

  Eric Goldman uncovered another interesting lawsuit involving Yahoo. This one involves the organic search results showing spam results for a person’s name, where this person is suing Yahoo and Overture for “Lanham Act false endorsement and false designation of origin and violation of Wisconsin’s publicity rights statute and common law privacy rights.” Let me take [...]

• Yahoo Reorganizes, Rebrands Mobile Offerings As “Yahoo Mobile”
  

  In Barcelona at the GSMA Mobile World Congress event, which has been mostly about new handsets so far, Yahoo announced what it’s calling “Yahoo Mobile.” I haven’t yet been able to talk to anyone at Yahoo about this, but it appears to be mostly a rebranding and repackaging of existing Yahoo mobile assets, with a [...]

• Sustainable Link Equity
  

  Over the course of a Web site’s existence, it will earn a certain amount of link equity, which in simpler terms, is the collection of the links that point to a site at any moment in time. It’s fair to say that in some cases, no matter how fantastic a site’s content is, the links pointing [...]

• How #uksnow Made Social Media Fun Again
  

  The start of this month saw the UK hit by the worst snowfall it had seen for nearly 20 years. Whilst the amount of snow involved (about 1 foot at its worst) would barely count as a sprinkling in parts of North America or Scandinavia, it brought the UK’s (mostly 100 year old plus) infrastructure [...]

• Google Shuts Down Business Pages For Mobile Ads
  

  Tim Cohn tipped us to his blog post about the end of Google’s Business Pages for Mobile Ads product. When logged into his AdWords account, Tim found this alert: “AdWords Business Pages for mobile ads are being retired. As the first stage, you will no longer be able to edit your mobile Business Page after March [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• A completely new Gadget Designer, Google Desktop APIs

Business Issues

• Final stimulus package includes $7.2 billion for broadband, News.com
• Google: The Case Against A Second Half Recovery, BarronâÄôs Online
• MySpace’s Google Gravy Train Set to Stop Next Year, AllThingsD

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google Promotes Local Yet Again, Local Search News
• Microsoft in talks to acquire local startup 3DV Systems, Haaretz
• Second ‘Google phone’ is unveiled, BBC NEWS
• Superpages’ New "SuperGuarantee" a Bold Move, Screenwerk
• Vodafone to Launch Android Phone, Wall Street Journal

Link Building

• Creating Dofollow Links On Delicious, raven-seo-tools.com

Paid Search & Contextual

• AdWords API Developer Docs: Now in Chinese and Japanese!, AdWords API Blog
• AdWords Downtime: February 21, 10am-2pm PST, AdWords API Blog
• Future Shock for Internet Ads?, Wall Street Journal
• How Does Google AdSense Decide To Send You A Tip?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Microsoft Advertising: Insights Podcast – Using Geographic & Demographic Targeting To Increase Audience Relevancy, adCenter Blog for Advertisers
• PPC Marketers: You Must Track Phone Calls!, Search Engine Journal

Searching

• Misguided Notions: A Study of Value Creation in Real-Time Search, Jonathan Mendez’s Blog
• Affiliate Liability Talk Notes from SMX West, Eric Goldman
• Industry Trends: job postings fall in all sectors, Indeed
• Searchers Using Longer Queries in 2009, Small Business SEM
• Study on the Structure of Search Queries, SEO By The Sea

SEM Industry

• Six Questions with John Marshall, BruceClay.com
• Google Needs to Change It’s Conference Presentation Policy, Michael Gray
• How The Small Guy Can Use Trust To Win The SEO Game, SEO Book
• Ignorance: The Trouble with People Who Claim SEO is Snake Oil, Search Engine Watch
• Measuring Success in a 2.0 World: SES 2009, Search Cowboys
• Search Around the World, Search Marketing Gurus
• SES London – Measuring Success in a 2.0 world, Search Marketing Gurus
• We’re Hiring an SEO, SEOmoz
• Why SEO Will Never Die, SEO.com

SEO & SEM

• Being Your Own SEO Client Is Not Easy, Search Engine Roundtable
• Can’t Shake A Google Penalty? What To Do Next?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Dominating Your SEO Competition Through Competitive Knowledge, Search Engine Guide
• Introducing The SEO Book Competitive Research Tool, SEO Book
• Mahalo Caught Spamming Google With PageRank Funneling Link Scheme, SEO Book
• SEO Writers Block? Recycle Your Content, Search Engine Journal
• Sexify SEO Headers And Make The Designers Happy With This Easy Trick, seoroi.com
• The point is, marketers should advertise on multiple search engines, Forrester Blog

Social Media

• Perez Hilton Asks for Facebook "Boycott" Amidst Content Ownership Controversy, RyanSpoon.com
• Ultimate How-To: Social Media Buttons, Tools and Badges Resource, 10e20 Blog

Video, Music & Image Search

• Google Video Drops "Movers & Shakers" & Top Videos, Search Engine Roundtable
• Justin.tv Is Redirecting Porn Queries Into Cash, TechCrunch

Web Analytics

• Yahoo Analytics Better than Google Analytics – For Enterprise, Web Analytics World Blog

Other Items

• Bollywood dancing, tech info and hacks, Yodel Anecdotal
• In search of the Google of clean tech, News.com
• Oscar anticipation for Google, San Francisco Chronicle

Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:

• 5 Steps to Creating Sticky Social Content
• Passing PageRank through Google Profiles: A Small but Valid Test
• Everything You Can Do with Raven SEO Tools
• Blogging and the Art of Etiquette | SEOptimise