SearchCap: The Day In Search, July 21, 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:

• Yahoo Q2 Earnings: $1.57B, Down 13 Percent Vs. 2008

  Yahoo announced second quarter earnings of $1.57 billion this afternoon. Compared with the same period a year ago, earnings were down 13 percent. The company is predicting an even more modest third quarter: “in the range of $1,450 million to $1,550 million.”
  Search revenues were $359 million, off 15 […]
• How To Research, Create And Distribute Highly-Linkable Content

  Without an ordered approach, careful research and custom tools it can be difficult for link builders, writers and content strategists to know what content will attract links in a target market. This article provides a process and tools for developing and distributing linkable content based on the content that’s proven to attract links in your target keyword space.

• Report: ChaCha Voice Search Beats Google, Yahoo/Vlingo In Accuracy, Reliability

  A new report finds that mobile search and answers service ChaCha beat Google and Yahoo’s voice search tools in terms of overall accuracy and reliability across a range of query types in a controlled study. The study was conducted by Albright Communications/MSearchGroove in January of this year.
  The report, which can be downloaded from the ChaCha […]

• Bing Wants Your Jingle On Google’s YouTube

  Bing is hosting one of those viral video contests, asking people to submit a jingle about Bing via YouTube. The contest is named the “Bing Jingle Contest” and the winner can earn a $500 American Express gift card.
  Here is a video by the Bing interns explaining how to participate:

  If you don’t want […]

• Yahoo’s New Homepage Gets Personal, Tests Search Filters

  When I heard about the call with Yahoo yesterday, which was to feature “a significant announcement,” I thought: “Bing, here it is.” When it turned out the call was about a formal announcement of the new Yahoo homepage I was disappointed; it seemed anti-climactic.
  The existence of a forthcoming Yahoo homepage redesign has been known for […]

• Five More Search Tools You May Not Know … But Should

  Have you ever needed to see the search results for another city — maybe because you want to see what PPC ads are shown somewhere else? Have you ever needed to see search results from a different country, or in a different language? Maybe you’re into real time search, and you’d love a place to […]

• 3 Aggregation Tools For Tracking Tweets

  Looking to find out how popular your blog post was on Twitter? Want to know what tweets people really enjoy? Well, these Twitter-based applications can help you see the most popular trends on Twitter by aggregating tweets.
  1. Tweetmeme
  By far the most popular tweet aggregator, Tweetmeme lists the most popular links on Twitter. Much like Digg, […]

• Google Announces Minor Updates To Webmaster Tools

  The next time you login to Google’s Webmaster Tools, you may notice a few minor changes to the interface and functionality. Google announced four changes today — two of which seem worth highlighting here:

  Blocking non-home page sitelinks: The ability to block certain sitelinks from showing in Google results now applies to all pages on your […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Now displaying images in messages from your contacts, Official Gmail Blog
• Updating your connections with Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Groups
• Add New Contacts in a Flash, Yahoo! Mail Blog
• Google Wave Begins To Swell With Developers; Wider Release This September, TechCrunch
• Welcome home to the new Yahoo.com, Yodel Anecdotal

Business Issues

• Why Is Obama’s Top Antitrust Cop Gunning for Google?, Wired
• Another Yahoo Exec Departure: Chief Scientist Mobile Marc Davis Out, TechCrunch

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Superpages Promotes Vertical Vehicle Site, Screenwerk

Link Building

• 14 Dofollow Backlink Resources, Search Engine People
• Are Your Link Building Efforts Localized?, Vertical Measures
• Link Building – Should I Avoid Reciprocal Links?, Hobo
• Poll: Will You Remove The NoFollow Attributes From Your Pages?, Search Engine Roundtable

Paid Search & Contextual

• Quality Score fact of the week, AdWords Agency Blog
• Expanding availability of local currency reports, Inside AdSense
• Get More Leads by Restructuring and Optimizing Your Google Content Network Campaigns, PPC Hero
• Improve your ads to capture more customers, Inside AdWords
• Rotating Google AdSense Unit Colors, Search Engine Roundtable

Searching

• Wolfram|Alpha is On the Job with Occupation and Wage Data, Wolfram|Alpha Blog
• Google News Drops RSS Buttons Due To Spam?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Twitterfeed is killing Twitter Search, BlogStorm

SEM Industry

• 82% Say We Should Name Some Google Updates, Search Engine Roundtable
• Peaceful Coexistence: 6 Reasons to Love Google, SEO Book

SEO & SEM

• Bing Geo-Targeting With Meta Language Tag, Search Engine Roundtable
• SEO FireFox Addon: Do On-Page Link Analysis with FoxyRank, Search Engine Journal
• Top 3 Google Gadgets to SEO Your iGoogle Home Page, Search Engine Journal

Social Media

• Facebook co-founder’s Asana raises funding — from Facebook angels?, VentureBeat
• Customer Service Has a New Name and It’s Twitter, Search Engine Journal
• DiggBar Changes Permanent – No Longer A Short URL Service, TechCrunch
• Does social media lead to better financial results for companies?, econsultancy.com
• Good Customer Service is Good Social Media Marketing, Techipedia
• SEO Meme – Twitter powered SEO news, BlogStorm
• The Art of the Auto Direct Message, 10e20 Blog

Video, Music & Image Search

• Warner Music and YouTube still talking on deal, Reuters
• Microsoft’s MSN To Shut Down YouTube-Rival Soapbox, paidContent.org

Other Items

• The Workaholic Google Couple That Will Crush Your Spirit – Marissa Mayer, Valleywag

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

• The A-B-C’s of social media – RedEye