SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 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:

• Ask.com Adds Privacy Link To Home Page, Hopes People Care
  Google recently came under fire for not providing a link to its privacy policy right from its home page, as Yahoo and Microsoft do. Ask.com, apparently hoping to ride the issue to some consumer gains, has emailed us that it now proudly sports a privacy link on its home…
• Attend SMX Local & Mobile To Leave The PageRank Pack Behind!
  As I watch search marketers often continue to obsess about things like PageRank, I wanted to do a personal post / wake-up call related to our SMX Local & Mobile Search Marketing show happening next month in San Francisco, July 24-25. Because for all the buzz that goes on…
• Nielsen: Google Already Dominant In Mobile Search
  Nielsen Mobile is reporting that Google leads rivals Yahoo and Microsoft in mobile search by margins comparable to those on the desktop….
• Microsoft Adds Television To adCenter With Navic Acquisition
  The rumor was that Microsoft had been interested in buying Spot Runner, which provides a range of targeting capabilities to cable TV advertising (as well as online). But instead the company has purchased Navic. Navic does many things but basically enables more targeted and, in some cases, interactive advertising on…
• Irony: If Google Can’t Reach Your Robots.txt File, It Might Not List Your Site
  I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable this morning that Google said if your robots.txt is unreachable, your site might not make it into the Google index. By unreachable, Google means that if your server simply times out and does not return any server response when Googlebot attempts to access…
• Google Supports Gay Pride With Rainbow Colors
  Conduct a search in Google for gay, lesbian, homosexual and other related searches and you might see Google supporting gay pride by adding a rainbow colored divider between the organic search results and paid search results. Philipp spotted this the other day and also added that Google is well known…
• Landing Page Testing: How Much Is Too Much?
  Your landing page is a key part of any successful paid search campaign, and by now, the value of testing and optimizing your landing pages has become accepted wisdom. However, many testing methodologies—especially multivariate testing—are complex and are only appropriate for sites that get hundreds of conversions a day….
• Google Decides Books Have Consumer Intent, Puts Them Into Product Search
  While Microsoft closed its book search service to focus on search with “high consumer intent,” Google’s gone the opposite way and expanded its book search service in one of the most consumer-driven search verticals, product search. Google Operating System reports that Google has integrated Google Book Search directly into Google…
• Flickr Founders Fake & Butterfield Latest To Leave Yahoo
  Yahoo feels like a nation that won its independence only to see all its leaders immediately flee the country. The latest emigrants: Flickr cofounders Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield. Their departure is unlikely to stall Flickr, but it gives a terrible impression of Yahoo as a company in further…
• Compete: Google Keeps Stomping The Others In Search Traffic
  The latest search engine share stats for May 2008 from Compete show Google hitting yet again another high. Let’s do the numbers, including the debate on whether Microsoft Live Search Club searches should be counted plus how everyone might start generating queries in new ways….
• Don’t Miss Your Last Chance To Save On SMX Local & Mobile
  Short and sweet. Register by the end of the day this Friday, June 20, and you’ll get the lowest rate — just $1095 — on SMX Local & Mobile in San Francisco July 24-25. SMX Local & Mobile provides the tips, tactics and strategies you’ll implement immediately to achieve outstanding…

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Update: MySpace Redesign Now Live, TechCrunch

Business Issues

• Answers Corp. Raising Up To $13 Million From VC Firm Redpoint Ventures, paidContent.org
• LinkedIn Closes Its Round; Got That Billion Dollar Valuation, TechCrunch
• Social Stand-Off: Google And Facebook Not, TechCrunch
• Happy One Year Anniversary, Jerry, TechCrunch
• The Father of Google Reader Resigns, Mashable
• Yahoo Sales "Hiring Aggressively" Amidst Freeze Rumors, ClickZ

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Center’d marries local search to event listings and planning, VentureBeat
• Experiencing Google’s Android, CNET
• Get Found! Practical Local Search @ SES, AIM Clear Blog
• Local.com Adds Reviews Capability, Screenwerk
• We Need a New "Local Framework", Screenwerk

Link Building

• Google Defends Bad Link Theory & Repeats That Competitors Can’t Hurt You, Search Engine Roundtable
• Internal Linking, Nofollow and Link Blocking Strategies That Provide Maximum Impact On Your SEO Campaign, Search Engine Guide
• Linkbait, PR, Outreach & Evolving Tactics, AIM Clear Blog
• The Link Theme Pyramid, Search Engine Roundtable

Paid Search & Contextual

• A request for the community: adCenter API code in Python? – adCenter API, adcentercommunity.com
• AdWords API Video Tutorial, AdWords API Blog
• AdWords system maintenance on June 21st, Inside AdWords
• So we’re launching an ad network… AND overhauling our search infrastructure, Technorati Weblog
• Alibaba launches free China online advert service, Reuters

Searching

• Firefox browser version 3 and QnA, Live QnA
• Trusera Launches Social Search Site for Health, altsearchengines.com
• Twitturly Living Up To Its Potential As Great News Source, TechCrunch

SEM Industry

• PyramidLinking.com the Inside Story, BlogStorm
• Top stories and blog posts from SES Toronto: Day 1, Search Engine Watch Blog

SEO & SEM

• Ranking Factors: How Engineers Perceive Usefulness, seoroi.com
• SEO Case Studies : Dealing With Multi-Language Countries Targeting, Search Engine Journal
• Five reasons to invest in online marketing during a slump, SEOptimise
• Online Reputation Management with Video SEO, Search Marketing Standard
• Whiteboard Interviews-URL Hijacking with Rob Kerry, SEOmoz
• 301 Redirect Explained, Shimon Sandler
• Don’t Overlook the Power of Keywords in the Singular Form, Search Engine Journal

Social Media

• How Twitter, FriendFeed Can Goose Online ‘Shelf Space’, Ad Age
• New Profile Design Update, and New Metrics, Facebook Developers News
• Twitter: Ultimate Time Waster or Great Tool?, 10e20 Blog
• Reddit just made their algorithm open source, BlogStorm
• Stop Using Search Engines, Start Twittering, SheGeeks

Video, Music & Image Search

• 11 Billion Videos Viewed Online in the U.S. in April 2008, comScore
• Video Tip: Getting the Most from 16:9, Yahoo! Video Blog
• YouTube experiments with full-length video, CNN Money

Web Analytics

• Make Your Content Reports More Useful, Google Analytics Blog

Other Items

• Daily SearchCast, June 17, 2008: Google , Daily SearchCast
• Google Doesn’t Kill People, People Do, Search Engine Watch Blog

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