SearchCap: The Day In Search, January 15, 2008

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

• 7 Tips To Win The Social News Beauty Pagent
  How can you increase your chances of appealing to an average Digger, Stumbler or other social media user, and actually get them to vote for your content? Consider this quote from John Maynard Keynes, British born economist responsible for Keynesian economics, who explains how markets work by making an…
• Website EKG a Must for ROI
  I was casually chatting with a super-savvy Web 2.0 friend – we’ll call him Mac – about a website I work closely with. We’d spent the last year overhauling the strategy and the design of the site, though there are still several features waiting to be built, and the…
• MacWorld Highlights: Steve Jobs On The Future Of Mobile
  What does mobile computing, that on-line all the time phenom of the future look like, and how soon will we have ubiquitous mobile search? Apple Chairman Steve Jobs offered some serious clues in his keynote address here in San Francisco at MacWorld this morning….
• Free Webcast Thursday: How To Select A Paid Search Management Application
  On Thursday January 17, Christine Churchill, president of KeyRelevance, will discuss “How to Select a Paid Search Management Application.” As paid search continues to be the largest segment of online advertising, it’s also become more complex and competitive—and difficult to manage. If you’re still trying to manage paid search using…
• Search Illustrated: An SEO Checklist
  When it comes to SEO, there are certain elements that need to be in place for any newly-designed website. Have 301 redirects been put into place? Is the robots.txt file authored to allow adequate crawling? This week’s infographic depicts a handy checklist that will help get you through any…
• Microsoft and MediaCart Bring Ad Targeting To Grocery Store Shopping Carts
  I can imagine two possible consumer reactions to MediaCart, a smart shopping cart that offers video displays, personalized services and targeted advertising to shoppers in retail stores: amazement or horror. Microsoft has teamed up with MediaCart to offer in-store ad targeting that is both behavioral and takes the concept of…
• Google Directory Update Showing “Real” PR Scores?
  Google PageRank Directory Clanger by Andy Beard informs us that Google recently pushed out an update to the Google Directory on the 8th of January. What that means is that Google pulled the most recent ODP RDF dump file and updated the Google Directory with that file. But more importantly,…
• Google Maps Being Used To Engage Political Volunteers, Activists
  Google has been showcasing its primaries mapplets, which offer results breakdowns by candidate and county, as well as other information (e.g., video). The Google LatLong blog now posts about how the candidates, campaign staffers and other third parties are using the Google Maps and Maps API to showcase their messages…
• Wireless Spectrum Bidders Approved, Auction Begins January 24
  The US Federal Communications Commission has approved 214 “qualified bidders” for the forthcoming 700MHz wireless spectrum auction. Among the bidders are Google and wireless carriers AT&T, Verizon and MetroPCS. According to this Bloomberg report, the government expectation is that the spectrum licenses may raise as much as $15 billion….

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Official Gmail Blog: New Gmail for the iPhone, Official Gmail Blog
• Switch Between Your Gmail Accounts, Google Operating System
• 50 Tips, Tweaks and Hacks to Make the Most of Google Calendar, Virtual Hosting Blog
• Yahoo! launches developer network in Taiwan, DigiTimes.com
• Clearwire plans to offer Google applications, Reuters
• Official Gmail Blog: New "e" shortcut archives every time, Official Gmail Blog

Business Issues

• More On IAC/Ask Exec Changes; Horan’s Shifts, paidContent.org
• Mozilla’s New CEO Talks DataPortability and the Future of Firefox, Read/Write Web
• Yahoo arrives in Israel, forms partnership with Walla, Jerusalem Post
• Yahoo Canada Extends Sponsorship Agreements, MediaPost
• Yahoo! Q4 and Full Year 2007 Earnings Conference Call Tuesday, January 29, 2008 at 2:00 p.m. PT / 5:00 p.m. ET, Yahoo Press Releases

Conferences

• Elite Retreat 2008 April 3-4 San Francisco, ShoeMoney
• Google Pet Video, LOLCats and SES New York Mystery, Search Engine Watch Blog
• SMX Social Media ‘08 Registration Open – West Coast Edition, Search Marketing Expo Blog

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google Earth Blog: Surface to Air Missile Sites in Google Earth, Google Earth Blog
• Students get Google nod for online UWA, The Australian

Link Building

• Buy Expired Domains For SEO Link Value?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Linkbait Tuesday: Easy ways to linkbait, BlogStorm
• Google News Comments Allowing Links, InsideGoogle

Paid Search & Contextual

• Paid Search For Big Sites, 10e20 Blog
• Adapt Offers Free 7 Day Test of Paid Search Management Software, Search Engine Journal
• Google Fixes AdSense Reporting Sorting Issue After One Month, Search Engine Roundtable
• What Does Your PPC Ad Say About You?, Small Business SEM
• Beware of Google AdWords Cold Callers: It’s Not Google, Search Engine Roundtable

Searching

• Official Google Reader Blog: There’s a feed for that?!, googlereader.blogspot.com
• US: Wikia Launch , Hitwise Intelligence
• AOL UK Search Only Showing 200 .Net TLDs in Search Index?, Search Engine Roundtable

SEM Industry

• Googler, JohnMu, Get Well Soon!, Search Engine Roundtable
• The Diminishing Value of the SEO Shop, ClickZ

SEO & SEM

• Getting URLs outta Google – the good, the popular, and the definitive way, sebastians-pamphlets.com
• Google Updates, Penalties and Filters – A Walk Down Memory Lane | Brisbane SEO Blog, blog.sitemost.com.au
• 12 Ways to Keep Your Content Hidden from the Search Engines, SEOmoz
• Fresh Content: Myth or Magic?, BlogStorm
• Republican Mike Huckabee: 2008 Presidential Candidates & Online Marketing Strategies, Search Marketing Gurus
• Online Resources for Would-be SEOs, SEO Chat

Social Media

• Facebook buying Plaxo?, VentureBeat
• Plaxo And Facebook Merger Rumors False (So Far), TechCrunch
• Facebook Is No Kingmaker, New York Times
• SEOmoz’s Video on BlogonExpo – a 15 Minute, Social Media Extravaganza, SEOmoz
• Facebook Gets Investment From German Online Entrepreneurs Samwer Brothers| paidContent.org, paidContent.org

Video, Music & Image Search

• Download YouTube Videos Directly to Your iPod via iTunes , Digital Inspiration
• YouTube Mexico attracts local media firms, Reuters
• YouTube Video Previewer, Googlified
• YouTorrent: Torrent Meta Search Engine, Read/Write Web

Other Items

• Don’t Be Evil: Indian police beat man Google helped arrest, Valleywag
• Macworld 2008: Spending hours in the cold waiting for Steve Jobs is Googler tradition, Valleywag
• Podcast: Google iPhone Love; AdSense Ban Causes Investor Warning; Prof. Bans Google , Daily SearchCast
• Washington vs Google culture war: Washington wins, Reuters

Last 20 Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:

• 14 Monty Python Skits about Search Marketing
• 5 Steps for Recovering from an Online Reputation Crisis
• Profitability: Ad Serving vs Listing Serving
• Come Clean: SMO is Not SEO
• Yahoo! & Microsoft Still do Not Understand Marketing
• 10 Blog Goals for 2008
• 5 Quick SEO Tips for Bloggers
• Page Rank Discussion Never Ceases to Amaze Me
• 12 Ways to Keep Your Content Hidden from the Search Engines
• Why The SEO World Is Full Of Sh*t – Part 1
• Nominations Are Posted for 2007 SEMMYS
• How to get Featured in Magazines and Newspapers with No Connections…and Turn it into Mega-bucks
• How to Troubleshoot Dropped Search Engine Rankings
• Getting URLs outta Google – the good, the popular, and the definitive way
• Do You Report Paid Links? What Goes Around Comes Around!
• I Suppose This Is One Way To Deal With Comment Spam ;)
• 2018: A Domaining Odyssey – Predictions from the Pros
• Yahoo on Testing Relevance and Variety in Search Results
• Four Ways to Enforce Your Copyright: What to Do When Your Online Content Is Being Stolen
• Paid Search For Big Sites
• This Link Building Was Pure Genius
• What’s The Point of Social Media Marketing
• Truly, What Word-of-Mouth THING Will Replace Search Engines?
• Kids, Plug Your Ears! I Am Going to Talk About SEO P*rn!
• Whopper Freakout Shows Burger King is King of Viral