SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 21, 2011

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 Simplifies Site-Specific Bidding on Display Network

  Google is eliminating managed placement default bids in an effort to simplify bidding on its Display Network. Now Display Network advertisers who use managed placements will only have to deal with a regular default bid and a Display Network default bid. The change will go into effect March 15. They effect managed placements only, which […]
• Hot At Sphinn: Hiring An SEM Consultant, Black Hat E-Commerce SEO & More

  “Variety” seems to be the primary keyword when it comes to the hot stories last week on our sister site, Sphinn. A story about Twitter tools was popular among Facebook users and a discussion about defining the “long tail” garnered several comments, but the biggest stories of the week involved black hat e-commerce SEO and […]

• Is Google Ignoring The HTML Title Tag More Often?

  Google’s long created title tags from means other than using the HTML title tag, however, there are reports that it might be increasing the times it does so. A WebmasterWorld thread has dozens of webmasters complaining that Google is not using their HTML title tags. The HTML title tag is often used by Google as […]

• Why You Should Pay Attention to Customer Loyalty + Lifetime Value

  Consumers don’t always make a purchase within the same day or even the same week that they click on an ad, but that doesn’t mean the ad didn’t drive a sale. Many online marketers see significant latency between a paid click on an online ad and a purchase. Moreover, your most valuable customers are the […]

• 5 Easy Landing Page Tests

  It’s landing page testing time! In this article, I will outline five ways to test elements on your landing pages. Before getting started with landing page testing, it’s important to ensure the following: Identify testing goals. Are you trying to increase sales? Leads? Identify them. Test variables that have a direct impact on your goals. […]

• Google Maps “Send To Car” Running Out Of Gas?

  There have been a number of comments in forums and tweets that people aren’t seeing the Google Maps’ “send to car” option any longer. The following comment is representative: The send to car option is gone from the Google Maps Beta: there is only a send to email and send to phone option. Is it […]

• Google Logo Honors Constantin Brancusi’s 135th Birthday

  Google is celebrating what would’ve been the 135th birthday of Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi with a special log0 — or “doodle” as Google calls them — that features seven of his sculptures. Brancusi was born February 19, 1876 in Romania and died on March 16, 1957 in Paris. It’s one of the more vague Google […]

• Court Reversal Brings Surprising Loss For Google In AdWords Trademark Case

  A Federal judge in California has denied Google’s motion to dismiss a “false association” claim in Daniel Jurin’s case against it, surprisingly reversing his own previous rulings. Intellectual property attorney Eric Goldman reported the development in his Technology and Marketing Law Blog. Jurin has been waging a legal battle against Google for years, alleging that […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Google May Kill Chrome URL Bar, ConceivablyTech
• How do we choose the Best of Answers?, Yahoo Answers Blog

Business Issues

• Alibaba.com CEO and COO Step Down, Alizila
• Google Gets Involved in BitTorrent Search Engine Lawsuit, torrentfreak.com
• Google Trying to Avoid Antitrust Fight in Europe, New York Times
• Yahoo Engineer Complains About Lack Of Innovation At Yahoo, TechCrunch
• Yandex Plans $1 Billion IPO on NASDAQ in Summer 2011, Quintura blog

Link Building

• Why Internal Links are More Important than Backlinks, seodesignsolutions.com
• Big Brands and Bad Linking: How to Avoid Google Penalties, Search Engine Watch
• Negative Link Counts In Google Webmaster Tools?, Search Engine Roundtable

Searching

• Complexity Cases in Wolfram|Alpha, Wolfram|Alpha Blog
• How Google Might Offer Face Search by Using Pictures from Social Networks, SEO By The Sea
• Is Baidu About To Get Social With Facebook?, All Facebook
• Live World Cup Cricket Action from Y! Search, Yahoo Search Blog

SEM Industry

• Over half of SEOs use FireFox, blog.majesticseo.com
• President’s Day 2011 Logos From Bing & Ask.com But Not Google Or Yahoo, Search Engine Roundtable

SEO & SEM

• Google Spamming the SERPS, Again., explicitly.me
• Non-professional SEO Optimization for Small Business Organizations, Search Engine Journal
• PPC Pain Points, PPC Blog
• Search Engine Optimization: Anchor Text Flows Just Like PageRank, Bill Hartzer
• Site Speed – Are You Fast? Does it Matter?, SEOmoz
• The Importance of SEO Education Within a Company, Search Engine People
• Web Search: Is the Buying Funnel of Any Value for Keyword Advertising?, jimjansen.blogspot.com
• What Does Blekko’s Spam Clock Really Say About Google Spam?, BruceClay.com

Social Media

• Facebook chat in Hotmail now available everywhere, windowsteamblog.com
• Foursquare Closing In On 7 Million Users, TechCrunch
• Ignoring social media just stopped working, Search Engine Guide

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

• Two Great Twitter Visualization Tools: Twiangulate & MentionMap – Today I've discovered two terrific Twitter visualization tools that I would like to share with you. Both can help you find very interesting people to follow on Twitter.
• What’s the Matter with the Search Alliance? – An up-to-date post about the Yahoo-Bing Search Alliance and how it is/has affected clicks, costs and volume.
• Using Regular Expressions to Group Keywords in Google Analytics – A useful post on how to group your keywords in order to analyze them in segments. >>> Earlier this week, SEER held a “Google Analytics 101″ training for our interns. Questions were asked about RegEx, and I ended up sending an email out to the team with my most commonly used Regular Expressions, as used for Keyword Analysis within Google Analytics. Below are the five Regular Expressions shared with the team:
• Are Manual Solutions The Answer To Content Farms? – Dave Harry discusses various approaches to deal with mass produced Web content –as well as Web spam– from a geek's point of view. Obviously explicit feedback mechanisms don't work well, because they're spammable and active user participation is rare, also usually too biased to lead to results capable to satisfy the masses. Maybe Google's approach of factoring in implicit feedback, besides authority, could lead to better results eventually, simply because it scales well.