SearchCap: The Day In Search, January 19, 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: 2009: Is The Glass Half Full Or Half Empty For the Yellow Pages Industry?Challenges are certain, but we’ll prosper by focusing on strengths and available opportunities The one thing that’s certain […]
Barry Schwartz on January 19, 2009 at 4:55 pm | Reading time: 9 minutes
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
From Search Engine Land:
- 2009: Is The Glass Half Full Or Half Empty For the Yellow Pages Industry?
Challenges are certain, but we’ll prosper by focusing on strengths and available opportunities The one thing that’s certain about 2009 is that it’s loaded with uncertainty. For local search providers, radical changes in the global marketplace present a whole new wave of issues, compounding the challenges already impacting a sector in transition. But, as the old saying goes: from change comes opportunity. The Yellow Pages sector, perhaps more than any other local search player, is keenly aware of the enormous hurdles presented by changing global economic and social dynamics. Search is fragmenting, consumer habits are changing, and the platforms through which Yellow Pages publishers interact with advertisers and consumers are rapidly evolving. And everyone is touting themselves as a local search expert. - GDrive: It’s Alive! — Or So It Appears
There’s new buzz and speculation about the status of Google’s unconfirmed online file storage service, informally dubbed “GDrive.” Garrett Rogers points to a CNET interview with Gmail Product Manager Todd Jackson, who’s quoted saying: “We know people’s file sizes are getting bigger. They want to share their files, keep them in the cloud, and not worry about which computer they’re on. Google wants to be solving these problems,” Jackson said. This is hardly definitive evidence, but it’s suggestive of the validity of the long-running rumor. Meanwhile over at Google Blogoscoped, there’s a screenshot of a menu featuring “Google … - The SEM RFP: Questions You Must Ask
Picking the right Search Engine Marketing (SEM) firm is hard. The quality of service and performance varies wildly, but the marketing materials often make it difficult to separate the experts from the pretenders. These questions should help cut through the marketing spin. - Google Quietly Drops iPhone Optimized iGoogle Page
I reported this morning at the Search Engine Roundtable that Google seemed to have quietly dropped the iPhone version of the iGoogle page. The iPhone iGoogle page use to be at google.com/ig/i, but when iPhone users navigate to google.com/ig/i they are redirected to the standard mobile iGoogle page at google.com/m/ig. Google said the reason they dropped the iPhone version was because they “want to ensure you’ll all see the same version” of the iGoogle mobile page. But Google made no official announcement on this change, I found this by viewing a thread where it seems like hundreds of iPhone users are upset with this change. - Some Parallels Between Obama And Yahoo’s Carol Bartz
Both Barack Obama and incoming Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz are taking charge of their respective administrations at times of crisis: the US is in financial turmoil, must establish clear and coherent priorities, restore its credibility and build new momentum diplomatically around the world. Yahoo, on a much smaller scale, is in a conceptually similar situation: It must get its financial house in order, establish clear goals and priorities, restore credibility with advertisers and partners and so on. It’s a stretch I know; Yahoo’s problems are quite small by comparison to the world economic and diplomatic challenges the country faces. Yet just as … - No Surprise: IAA Survey Shows Concern Over Google Market Dominance
AdAge reports on an International Advertising Association (IAA) member survey that shows — there’s little surprise here — concern over Google’s market dominance in search and potentially other areas of online advertising. The survey isn’t yet out but here’s what AdAge had to say about the IAA findings: The results indicate that advertisers are still concerned about Google’s size and market share, whether that was a naturally incubated fear or one inspired by Microsoft’s lobbying: 65% said there is one dominant player in the online ad market and that there are “limited choices and price options for online advertisers”; 85% … - Report: Search Spending Off 8 Percent In Q4
While search engine marketing has been somewhat more durable during the recession (to date), than other media, that may not save SEM from negative growth. The Wall Street Journal is reporting on the latest Efficient Frontier search marketing report, set to be released tomorrow. According to the Journal, the report will state that SEM declined 8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008. The Journal also cites the report as follows: Advertisers who spend less than $50,000 on search ads cut their spending by 23% year-over-year, while advertisers that spend more than $200,000 on search per month cut spending by 9% … - Google Testing “Preferred Sites” Option In Search Preferences
Google Operating System discovered a new experiment Google is running, named Preferred Sites. In short, users who are in this experiment will be able to add a list of sites in their search preferences page, as their “preferred sites.” Google will then use that information to show those sites in a higher ranking order in the Google results for that user, when it makes sense. Let me share some examples of how this works. - Live Search News Adds Email Alerts
The Live Search Blog announced the addition of email alerts for Live Search News. Live Search had RSS results for a while, but did not have a way to subscribe to news alerts via email. Live Search now gives you the ability to get these alerts via email either once a day, twice a day or weekly and you can subscribe by section or by search phrase.To start getting news in your inbox from Live Search, go to Live Search News. Then, click on where it says “News alerts” and a menu will open up. You will need a Windows Live login and then you specify the email alerts you want. Here is a picture: - Google & Others Martin Luther King Jr.’s Logos
Like last year, today, the search engines are commemorating Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I attached a collage of logos and themes from the various search engines, including Google, Yahoo, AOL, Live.com, Ask.com and Dogpile.To see them all in greater detail, you can visit their respective home pages today or go to the Search Engine Roundtable, where I posted each logo individually. Like I said in my other post, I suspect these search engines will all have special logos tomorrow, for Inauguration Day, … - Yahoo & Microsoft Execs Meet Again
Valleywag is reporting that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer met with Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock Thursday in New York City. As you can imagine, news of the meeting has restarted speculation about the on-again, off-again merger/deal talks. The New York Times says that spokespersons for both companies refused to comment about the Ballmer-Bostock meeting.Earlier this week, new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz mentioned that she’s already had an informal conversation with Ballmer.
Search News From Around The Web:
Applications & Portal Features
- 100,000th knol published, Official Google Blog
- Signal (and noise) about Jaiku this week, zengestrom.com
Business Issues
- Lycos Europe Killing Tripod, Customers Warned To Back Up, paidContent.org
- Why Google Employees Quit, TechCrunch
- Four Ways Yahoo Can Right Itself Under New CEO Bartz, Ad Age
- Is Google Talking Trash to the European Commission Over Internet Explorer?, Google Watch
Local, Maps & Mobile
- Google changes Bulk Uploads to Unverified in LBC – leads to loss of rank?, Mike Blumenthal
- Inaugurating President Barack Obama in Photosynth, Virtual Earth, An Evangelist’s Blog
- New View of Ocean Floor in Google Earth, Google Earth Blog
- Washington DC Imagery Update for Google Earth – Censorship Note, Google Earth Blog
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Launches Mobile Web Site, ResourceShelf
- Helpful maps for the Inauguration, Google LatLong
- Mapspam Reporting Looses Visibility In Map Support Groups, Mike Blumenthal
- Mobile Search Guide, Mobile Maven
- MSNBC’s Interactive Inauguration Map, Virtual Earth, An Evangelist’s Blog
- New phone features ‘baffle users’, BBC NEWS
Link Building
- The Perfect Link Request, Search Engine Journal
Paid Search & Contextual
- Cashing in on Canada: Adding Ad Groups with Canadian Distribution, adCenter Blog for Advertisers
- 3 Ways to Increase Sales in Google Adwords, SEO.com
- Google Grants: Much More Than Free Clicks for NonProfits – Part II, Search Marketing Gurus
Searching
- Search & Deploy, AdWeek
- How TED Helped Me Understand Personalized Search, Michael Gray
- Tags do work (for me, at least), 0xDECAFBAD
SEM Industry
- Peter Young: Search Blogger of the Day, The SEO Scoop
- Chris Hartwell: Search Blogger of the Day, The SEO Scoop
- Interview with Rebecca Lieb, VP at Econsultancy, Econsultancy
- Ruining the Web: Google is Responsible and Capable, John Andrews
SEO & SEM
- Even Internet Marketers Can Understand Latent Semantic Indexing, Bob Massa
- A Visual Guide to Online Reputation Management, Marketing Pilgrim
- Advanced SEO Toolbar Functions, SEO Book
- Are Rankings Still Relevant?, Search Engine Watch
- Google Toolbar PageRank Drops Over January ’09 Weekend, Search Engine Roundtable
- Linkscape Update 2 Now Live, SEOmoz
- What Aspect Of SEO Should You Be Spending Most Of Your Time On?, SEO Book
- Yahoo Search & Ask.com January 2009 Search Updates?, Search Engine Roundtable
Social Media
- 20 Totally Free Buzz Pocket Mining Tools, AIM Clear Blog
- 5 Steps to Twitter Success – Twitter Optimization Series Overview, SEOptimise
- Current Twitters the Inauguration, Twitter Blog
- How Twitter Can be Corrossive to Marketing Efforts, SEO Book
- Lotus Notes Soon To Become Even More LinkedIn, TechCrunch
- Preprint: The Information ecology of social media and online communities, ResourceShelf
Video, Music & Image Search
- (Some) YouTube videos get download option, News.com
- Pope to have own Google channel with video, The Associated Press
- Link by Link – Historical Photos in Web Archives Gain New Lives, New York Times
Web Analytics
- The short answer is.. you don’t have to change your snippet, Google Analytics Blog
- Web Analytics 101, Part 1, Search Engine Watch
Other Items
- Dinner: Impossible, Yodel Anecdotal
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