SearchCap: The Day In Search, July 16, 2010

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 Buys Metaweb To Bolster Answers, Google Squared & Rich Snippets

  Google announced they have acquired Metaweb. Metaweb is a search company that figures out entities and not just words. I have a video from the company explaining exactly what that means.
  In short, Google seems to want to explore and leverage Metaweb’s technology to bolster their rich snippet initiative and Google Squared project. […]
• Yahoo Answers Gets Major Search Upgrades, Email Alerts

  Yahoo Answers, the number one Answers/Q&A search engine on the web, has announced a series of improvements to the search experience on the site. The new search options are a welcome addition to what was long one of the site’s Achilles heels. Here’s an overview of some the new tools:
  Search results can now be sorted […]

• Google Maps Team Using Video For Q&A With Local Businesses

  Following the lead of Matt Cutts and the Google Webmaster Central team, the folks at Google Maps have started publishing videos that aim to help and educate local businesses. But, unlike the Cutts/GWC videos, the Google Maps videos are a bit on the … shall we say, low-budget/low-production side of things. And, the Google Maps […]

• Report: Open Source The Index Says Google Exec

  Blogger and former journalist Tom Foremski reports he had a conversation with the head of engineering for Google in Brazil and says the guy supported the idea of open-sourcing the search index:
  I mentioned an idea I had about making the Google index into an open database that anyone could access, I said that this […]

• Chitika: Yahoo-Bing Gains For Real

  Danny wrote about the latest comScore search share numbers and what they might mean. Have Yahoo and Bing genuinely gained share or has it been gamed or rigged with tricks? Has Google lost share? Danny argued that Google’s share might have slipped slightly but that overall query volume had risen so the share numbers don’t […]

• Google Testing New Image Search Design

  Google seems to be testing a brand new design for image search. I personally do not see it, but as I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable a few days ago, some people are seeing the new image search design.
  Today, I finally found pictures of the design via a Twitter user. […]

• The Subtle Science Of Bidding Part 2: Brand Keyword Management

  In my previous Analyze This column, I discussed various nuances of bid management that can have significant impact on the performance of your paid search campaigns. I had also mentioned that these subtleties have special implications for brand keyword management. In this post, I shall tell you about some special considerations that come up […]

• Site Navigation & Information Architecture Fundamentals For SEOs

  One of the most confusing skills to teach someone who practices organic search engine optimization is called “information architecture” (aka “IA”). I’ve given several talks on the topic in an effort to chip away at some popular misconceptions. Each time the audience has people who refer to themselves as an SEO, IA or […]

• Enterprise SEO Tools, Part 2: The Cloud

  Get ready for Part 2 in our series on enterprise SEO tools! Next up: web-based (or cloud hosted) tool sets for link research, SEO diagnostics, and competitive research.

• Google’s Maslan Says The Company Not Pushing Into Real Estate

  In an on-stage interview during the Inman Real Estate Connect conference this week in San Francisco Google’s Carter Maslan said that the company was not pushing into real estate specifically or going to build a direct national database of property listings and become a “universal MLS”:
  “What we are doing in real estate is […]

• Google News Brings Back Its Old Home Page … Kinda

  In response to sometimes loud and angry user feedback, Google News has tweaked its home page tonight — and one of the new features is very reminiscent of the old version of Google News.
  Just announced tonight are several feature changes to how the Google News home page looks and works. The most noticeable is […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Changes to Fans, Contacts and Voting Limits, Yahoo Answers Blog

Business Issues

• Gannett And Yahoo Strike Local Ad Partnership, paidContent.org

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Imagery Update – Week of July 12, Google LatLong
• Beware of Google Business Photos Scam, Search Engine Roundtable
• Get Firefox Home on Your iPhone!, The Mozilla Blog
• Route Planner Enhanced!, MapQuest Blog

Link Building

• Are We Over-Engineering the Link Graph?, Search Engine Watch
• Link Update In Google Webmaster Tools, Search Engine Roundtable

Searching

• Our op-ed: Regulating what is “best” in search?, Google Public Policy Blog
• Ask Wolfram|Alpha about Medical Drug Treatments, Wolfram|Alpha Blog
• Google’s Amit Singhal tells us about the dreams search engines are made of, Engadget

SEM Industry

• 35 SEO & Social Media Expert Interviews, SEOptimise
• Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: July 16, 2010, Search Engine Roundtable

SEO & SEM

• Local Search Optimization Interview with David Mihm, Vertical Measures
• Optimizing Navigation using CSS Image Replacement, Shimon Sandler
• SEO Celebrity Look-Alikes, Vertical Measures
• The Powerful New Choice in Search, Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog
• SEO Speak: Keyword density, Vertical Leap Blog
• Understanding Google AdWords Pay Per Click Keyword Match Types: Exact, Phrase, Broad and Modified Broad, webranking.com
• Video Sitemaps 101: Making your videos searchable, Official Google Webmaster Central Blog
• Want in Google Definitions? Maybe Use DL, DT, and DD Tags, Search Engine Roundtable
• Whiteboard Friday – The Biggest SEO Mistakes SEOmoz Has Ever Made, SEOmoz

Social Media

• Twitter Continues To Help You Figure Out Who Exactly Is Following You, TechCrunch
• "Experts" misunderestimate our traffic, and we don’t know why, blog.reddit
• 2 Ways to DISlike Things on Facebook (FireFox and Google Chrome), Search Engine Journal

Video, Music & Image Search

• New Data Shows Hulu Serves More Video Ads Than Google, Ad Age

Web Analytics

• A Shout Out About Annotations, Google Analytics Blog
• Spotlight on AdWords Search Funnels – Part 1, Conversion Room

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

• Brands and the World Cup: who were the real winners and losers? – Spain has emerged as world champions and the excitement is over for another four years. 32 teams battled it out in South Africa for World Cup glory, but the game wasn’t just being played on the pitch; brands went head-to-head in a fiercely contested online marketing battle.
• Are We Over-Engineering the Link Graph? – Great breakdown by Nicola Stott. Yes, anchor text is important, but we are also over emphasizing the importance.
• Want More Link Juice? Here’s an Easy Way to Get It – Great post focusing on the internal link juice that is so often overlooked. A process is provided and examples of great pages to obtain internal links are mentioned.
• Facebook and SEO – should you care? – I had been getting a bit leary of all the hype around 'FaceBook Search – the Google killer' and decided to take a closer look at what's going on there. While there are some interesting bits with the OpenGraph stuff (I am a meta data geek tho) I don't really think it is something to worry about – what do YOU make of it all?