SearchCap: The Day In Search, July 25, 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:

• Google “Knows” About 1 Trillion Web Items
  How big is Google’s web index? Google hasn’t said for years and still isn’t saying — but it is blogging today about how it "knows" of 1 trillion web-based items. Joy, we haven’t had a search engine talk about pages it knows about to confuse things since the Lycos…
• Italian Prosecutors To Sue Google Execs Over YouTube Video
  Italy Is to File Charges Against Google Executives from the Wall Street Journal reports that Italian prosecutors have completed their two-year investigation and are ready to file charges against four Google executives. The suit is over YouTube hosting a video of a disabled teen being taunted by others. The prosecutors…
• You Think You Know Enough To Do ALL Of Your SEO In-House?
  While SEO can be done completely in-house, not every company truly has the expertise to fly totally solo and make it to the destination without a bit of turbulence and unnecessary crashes along the way. The problem I’ve been seeing lately lies with companies who genuinely believe they know…
• SEM News, The Ultimate Guide To Search Marketing Optimization Part 2 & SpyFu Competitive SEM Karate
  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, today’s in-depth look, The Ultimate Guide to Search Marketing Optimization Part 2 – Reference…
• Search In Pictures: Matt Harding @ Yahoo, Google Chicken Soup & Yahoo Olympics
  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….
• Microsoft Goes After Google’s PageRank With BrowseRank
  Microsoft tries to one-up Google PageRank from News.com reports on a research paper from Microsoft named “BrowseRank: Letting Web Users Vote for Page Importance (PDF). The paper describes the downside of Google’s PageRank algorithm and describes how Microsoft’s “BrowseRank” algorithm fills in the holes. BrowseRank uses browsing behavior, such as…
• Mobile Mapping Usage Growing, Outrider Debuts Mobile Search Practice
  Maps and directions are (so far) the “killer app” for mobile and yesterday comScore reported that mobile mapping usage is on the increase: “8 percent of American mobile subscribers and 3 percent of European subscribers accessing maps from the mobile phone in the three-month period ending May 2008. This represents…
• Google Updates Toolbar PageRank; Drops Some Penalties
  Google is currently update the PageRank values found in the Google toolbar. A post from Google’s Matt Cutts announced and confirmed the update is taking place. In addition, Matt said they will be “expiring” some of the penalties with this update. I assume the penalties refer to the toolbar PageRank…
• Human Hardware: Navigation can be Habit Forming
  I’m currently in Europe on a family vacation. We’ve been here 3 days now and in that time I’ve driven almost 1000 kilometers (about 600 miles) on the highways and byways of France. We’re in the Rhone Alpes section of France, living in a 200 year old converted barn…

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Gmail for iPhone with Richer UI now in 17 more languages, Official Google Mobile Blog

Business Issues

• AOL Makes Big Budget Cuts Across Blogs, TechCrunch
• Proxy Advisor Supports Yahoo Board, Wall Street Journal
• Ballmer’s Catch-22 Problem With Search Ads, New York Times
• Google’s Begun Growing Very Fast, Profy.Com
• Italy Is to File Charges Against Google Executives, Wall Street Journal
• Microsoft executives say they’ve given up on buying Yahoo, Los Angeles Times

Local, Maps & Mobile

• The Local Advertiser of Today and Tomorrow, Search Engine Watch
• TheFind Launches Its iPhone App In Private Beta, TechCrunch
• trueSpace & Virtual Earth Newbie Troubleshooting, Virtual Earth, An Evangelist’s Blog

Link Building

Paid Search & Contextual

• AdSense farms get a free pass from Google, ITworld
• Microsoft adCenter UK Retail Event Review , adcentercommunity.com
• New Info to Chew On, Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog
• Trademarked Terms: Guaranteed Conversions, Guaranteed Controversy, Search Engine Watch

Searching

• What Google Looks to Colorblind, Google Blogoscoped

SEO & SEM

• Flash is Still Too Flashy for Competitive SEO, Stepforth
• 3 New Uses For www.Archive.org, seoroi.com
• Are SEO tools any use?, Site Visibility
• Don’t leak your staging urls into Google!, SEO hosting 101
• Google Sitelinks Adds Time Stamps in Webmaster Tools, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Updates Design of Google Cache Page, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Webmaster Tool’s WWW vs. Non-WWW Issues, Search Engine Roundtable
• How Accurate is the Google Keyword Tool’s Volume Estimates?, Search Engine War
• Learn the Art of Writing Search Engine Friendly URLs from Matt Cutts, Digital Inspiration
• Site Clinic: Fresh Eyes Often Find Unmet Expectations, Search Engine Guide

Social Media

• 21 Ways to Make Your Blog or Website Sticky, ProBlogger

Video, Music & Image Search

• Blow Up Flickr…Images!, Read/Write Web

Other Items

• Whiteboard Friday – Users vs. Experts, SEOmoz

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

• SEO Consultation Ruining Industry Reputation
• "Candy Ass Social Media Goody 2 Shoes"?
• Stop Google Analytics From Stealing AdWords Keyword Data
• SEO hosting 101 – don't leak your staging urls into Google!
• Google's Knol Launches: Like Wikipedia, With Moderation
• Understanding Typical Blog Post Structure … For Better Link Attraction
• The definitive guide on using KML for SEO
• Common Excuses Companies Use For Not Having a Blog
• Why I No Longer Blog for SEOmoz
• Negative Keyword Research Tools & Tips
• Google Knol is Behaviorally Targeting & Ranking well!
• The Google-Digg Prophesy – 5 Ways a Deal will Change the Internet
• Misinformation In the Blogosphere
• How to Combat Complaints Sites in Google