SearchCap: The Day In Search, July 18, 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:

• Very Recent & Addictomatic: Finding What People Are Buzzing About Right Now!
  Tom Churm pinged me about a new tool that he’s crafted, Very Recent, designed to pull back top results from "recency search engines," for lack of a better word. Blog search, news search, social news plus Twittering, all in one. It needs a lot of work, but I found…
• News Video Research Offers SEO Opportunities
  In a previous article titled New Online Video News Search Study – Is the Business Case Made?, I discussed a DoubleClick Performics study that looked at how consumers interact with online video news, how they use search in the process, and their desire to see more video search results on…
• Google’s Matt Cutts On Video About Spam & More
  The Google Webmaster Central Blog posted a video interview created by Juliane Stiller of Search Quality Team. Juliane interviewed Matt Cutts about search spam for the German Google Blog. My favorite question and answer set was when was the first time Matt found his first web spam. The video is…
• Search In Pictures: Google’s G-Fleet, Dave Barnes at Yahoo, Google Sidewalk Graffiti
  In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more….
• SEM News, The Ultimate Guide to Search Marketing Optimization & Broad Match Or Not?
  In The Trenches is a weekly spotlight of tips, tricks, and news about the tools search engine marketing professionals use to give them a leg up on the competition. Today: News from the search engines and today’s in-depth look, The Ultimate Guide to Search Marketing Optimization Part 1 and…
• Google Buys Russian Contextual Ad Service For $140 Million
  Google announced that it had acquired “Begun,” a Russian contextual ad service, for $140 million. The service had been a unit of Russia’s Rambler Media. Rambler also owns the Russian portal Rambler.ru. As part of the deal, Google-enhanced search results and ads will appear on the Rambler portal site. According…
• Microsoft adCenter Content Ads Self-Service Pilot
  TechCrunch reports that Microsoft is testing their self-service AdSense/YPN product named Content Ads. The truth is, as TechCrunch said in an update to his post, they have started this pilot earlier this year. I have a post at the Search Engine Roundtable linking to the pilot enrollment form. Content Ads…
• Google’s Webinar For Webmaster Tools, Analytics & Website Optimizer Now Live
  The Google Webmaster Central Blog posted a recording of the webinar they hosted, along with the Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer team. The webinar is available in a 60 minute YouTube video. In short, the webinar reviews the features of all three tools, Google Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics and…
• Google Reports $5.37 billion In Q2 Revenues, Microsoft Reports Full Year Revenues of $60 Billion
  Google had a strong quarter, given the challenging US and global economic climate. Revenues were basically flat vs. Q1 (+3 percent) but grew 39 percent as compared with the same quarter a year ago. AdSense and paid clicks were down slightly. Google may not be “recession proof,” but it’s more…

Search News From Around The Web:

Business Issues

• Microsoft’s Annual Revenue Reaches $60 Billion, Yahoo!Finance
• A chat with Yahoo’s David Filo, Mercury News
• Google Anti-Gravity Ray is Fading, SmoothSpan Blog
• Google Deliberately Sells Fewer Ads and May Have Gone Too Far, New York Times
• Legg Mason: We’re backing Yahoo, News.com
• Why Silicon Valley Should Be Worried, GigaOM
• Wikipedia Tries Approval System to Reduce Vandalism on Pages, New York Times
• Yahoo Updates Its Proxy Page, paidContent.org

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Amdocs Sharpens Focus on Mobile Search, altsearchengines.com

Link Building

• Tying Topical Events into Your Site’s Link Building Strategies, SEOmoz

Paid Search & Contextual

• Help improve your adCenter campaign performance with adCenter reports – adCenter Advertiser, adcentercommunity.com
• AdWords Editor service release for Windows and Mac, Inside AdWords
• What Does A Paid Search Marketing Strategy Mean To You?, SEM Geek
• Yahoo To Give Publishers More Control Over Their Keywords, Justin Davy

Searching

• Hitting 40 languages, Official Google Blog
• If Google had Semantic Technology, Hakia Blog
• Using Search Engines Instead of the Address Bar to Navigate, Marketing Pilgrim

SEM Industry

• Fight Fire With Fire – Track Official Google Responses, eVisibility.com
• The Happiest SEO in the Sea, SEO By The Sea

SEO & SEM

• An SEOmoz PRO Tip (For Everyone) , SEOmoz
• Are City/State Landing Pages Also Doorway Pages? Google Thinks So, Search Engine Roundtable
• Did Ask.com Stop or Slow Crawling the Web?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Study: Search Marketing Increases Brand Value, MediaPost
• One Product – Two Same-Language Countries?, Search Engine Journal
• Whiteboard Friday – Has Pagerank Changed?, SEOmoz

Social Media

• The Ultimate Guide To Decoding Digg Speak, 10e20 Blog
• Wikipedia Tries Approval System to Reduce Vandalism on Pages, New York Times
• Twinkle: Location Aware Twitter Client, Read/Write Web
• Twitter Chokes Unauthenticated API Requests By IP, Sites Gasp for Air, louisgray.com
• Twitter’s New Redesign, SheGeeks

Video, Music & Image Search

• Does Google Know How To Count? Some YouTube Views Don’t Seem To Register, TechCrunch

Web Analytics

• WebTrends Launches Video Analytics Engagement Service, CenterNetworks
• Practitioner Post: Adwords Auto-Tagging and URL Redirects, Google Analytics Blog

Other Items

• 100 reasons why you should love Google, Bloggle

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

• Does Matt Cutts have a URL canonicalisation problem?
• Google Continues To Test A Search Interface That Looks More Like Digg Every Day
• How to Hit the Frontpage of StumbleUpon
• Where in the World is the SEO Talent?
• A Rundown of Popular Directories Using the SEOMoz Trifecta Tool
• Free SEO Diagnostics Tool: Log File Parsing Script
• The Twelve People You Meet On Twitter
• The Ultimate Guide To Decoding Digg Speak
• Link Building for Big Brands
• Vanessa Fox: Search-Friendly Flash?
• How to Create Digg-Friendly Content: Cracked.com’s Template
• 10 Most Basic SEO Copywriting Rules
• Social Responsibility and the Small Business
• 21 Ways to Make Your Blog or Website Sticky
• Which Sections of Your Web Pages Might Search Engines Ignore?
• Keyword Analysis – Details Explained
• Social Media Cash Grab