SearchCap: The Day In Search, July 8, 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:

• Google Pitches New Small Business Customers, Ignores Existing Ones
  

  Google is hitting the streets of San Francisco next week — with at least one high-powered supporter in tow — to talk to small/local businesses about Google products and services. The event is called “Favorite Places,” and Google will have San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and other “San Francisco trendsetters” show their favorite local businesses [...]

• Google Search’s View PDF Link May Go To Google Docs
  

  Typically, when Google shows a PDF document in the Google search results, you see a link to “view as HTML,” in the snippet. Here is a picture of what you see most of the time:

  Now, it appears Google is showing a link that reads just “View” and links you to the PDF within a [...]

• Citigroup Study Says Google More Relevant Than Bing
  

  Citigroup conducted a study comparing 200 queries on Google, Yahoo and Bing. The study found that Google is much more relevant than Bing, in returning relevant results. Google returned the most relevant result 71 percent of the time, compared with Bing at 49 percent of the time and Yahoo 30 percent of the [...]

• Improving B2B Search Advertising Results via Ad Scheduling
  

  In the first part of this series, I explained how B2B Marketers can improve the efficiency of pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns via geo-targeting, and why this technique is beneficial, even for national advertising programs. Today’s article will explore a second, proven method of focusing PPC campaigns and improving results: ad scheduling. Ad scheduling Basically, there are [...]

• Do You Sound Like A Broken Record? Get Used To It…
  

  In a world where everything changes at break-neck speed, it seems like not a day goes by where I don’t utter some version of the same words and advice. After a recent chat with a couple of other in-house SEOs, it occurred to me… we sound like a broken record. Are we destined to repeat the [...]

• The Google Operating System Is Real: Google Chrome OS Announced.
  

  Ars Technica posted earlier that Google is to unveil its long rumored computer operating system, and now Google confirms this is true in a blog post: Introducing the Google Chrome OS. The company says that the OS will be released later this year (likely in the fall, I’m told) to developers, designed primarily for netbooks but [...]

• Yahoo Serves 5 Million Streams Of Michael Jackson Memorial, Most In Yahoo History
  

  Our love affair with celebrity continues, as evidenced by news today from Yahoo that it served about five million streams of the Michael Jackson Memorial ceremony. That makes it the most streamed event in Yahoo’s history, surpassing the inauguration of President Obama in January, when Yahoo served 1.8 million streams. While watching the event online, many [...]

• IxQuick Changes Name To Startpage
  

  IxQuick, which bills itself as “the world’s most private search engine,” has changed its name to the much-easier-to-remember Startpage. Startpage is a meta search engine that’s tried to differentiate itself from the pack by using privacy as a marketing feature. In 2006, shortly before the mistaken release of three months of AOL search data, the [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Automatic navigation, and a lot more themes and page layouts for Sites, The Google Apps Blog
• So Much For That Idea. Facebook Has Killed Off Its Great Apps Initiative, TechCrunch

Business Issues

• Google and YouTube Win Dismissal of Some Damages Claims, New York Times

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Designing useful mobile services for Africa, Official Google Blog

Link Building

• Stop Building S*&t Links, Hobo

Paid Search & Contextual

• AdWords Downtime: July 11, 10am-2pm PDT, AdWords API Blog
• Real-Time Search vs. Traditional Search Basics, BruceClay.com
• Google AdSense Site Authentication Control Bug, Search Engine Roundtable
• Kick Your Quality Scores Back Into Gear with a Few Ad Text Changes, PPC Hero
• Why is Google’s AdSense doing the bidding of Scientology?, Computerworld Blogs

Searching

• Does Google Suggest impact search volumes?, BlogStorm
• Michael Jackson Fans Upset With Google Over "Ugliest Person in the World", Search Engine Roundtable
• Twittorati Will Show You How Awesomely Fascinating Bloggers’ Lives Are (Or Not), TechCrunch

SEO & SEM

• Are You on an SEO Honeymoon?, Search Engine Journal
• Common SEO Misconceptions, SEO.com
• Getting Listed In Bing News, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Enhanced 404 Feature Gone?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google’s Gadget is Great, But Not for Local SEO, Small Business SEM

Social Media

• Does Social Media Need “Directing”?, 10e20 Blog
• Facebook Introduces The Fan Box. Take That, MySpace., TechCrunch
• How to spot a social media snake oil salesman, Econsultancy

Video, Music & Image Search

• Find your favorite clips with these video search engines, News.com

Web Analytics

• Segment your Traffic with the User Defined Report, Google Analytics Blog

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

• 6 Degrees of SEO Separation : Can We Reverse Engineer TrustRank and Hilltop?
• Blogger Gets 1st Page Ranking on Google For Porn
• Last Click vs First Click and Conversion Attribution