SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 18, 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 Book Search Adds Seven New Features
  

  Today, Brandon Badger, Product Manager, Google Books, announced on the Inside Google Book Search Blog, seven, that’s right seven, new features and tools for Google Book Search users. Here’s a quick look at what has just gone live. First, Google has made it easier, just click and copy, to embed “preview” material onto a web [...]

• Yahoo Supports Even More Structured Data In SearchMonkey
  

  Yahoo started the push to structure the web when it launched SearchMonkey. With SearchMonkey, a web developer could add semantic markup to a page and then build an enhanced listing for Yahoo search results. Not long after, they made things even easier by using this data to enhance listings even without a SearchMonkey application. Google [...]

• Collecta And CrowdEye Join The “Real Time” Search Club
  

  This morning there are two new entrants in the “real-time” search derby, run by two search veterans. They are CrowdEye and Collecta. CrowdEye is from Ken Moss, who ran search engineering at Microsoft and built the new engine himself. At the helm of Collecta is Gerry Campbell, who was a search executive at AOL and [...]

• Microsoft’s Search Engine Optimization Advice for Bing
  

  Microsoft recently published a PDF about Search Engine Optimization called Bing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters. This is the second SEO-related offering in as many weeks. During SMX Advanced, Microsoft launched the IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit. I’m working on a review of that as well, but it requires Vista or Windows 7 and IIS [...]

• Google Enables Importing “Goals” Into AdWords For Easier Conversion Tracking
  

  The Google Analytics Blog announced that advertisers can now import their Google Analytics Goals and Transactions into AdWords for conversion-tracking purposes and CPA bidding. Beyond CPA bidding the benefit is that it “lets you track campaign ROI and optimize your account for conversions directly inside the AdWords interface.” The move simplifies the overall process of [...]

• NBC Debuts “Addressable Advertising” With Microsoft Ads Platform
  

  Across the TV industry there are various efforts going on to bring more targeting into TV advertising. The readers of this blog know about Google’s TV advertising initiative. But SpotRunner and various others (e.g. Project Canoe) have been working to bring “addressable advertising,” the kind of targeting that exists online (demographic, geo, even behavioral), to [...]

• Google “Freshness” Factor May Mean Big Implications For Retailers
  

  Changes that Google has made to search queries have a big potential implications for retailers and other merchants. Among the first to recognize this and make proactive site changes is Pinny Gniwisch, executive vice president of marketing at jewelry site www.ice.com. Ice.com is No. 166 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.

  Most search [...]

• Do-It-Yourself SEO Advice For SMBs
  

  In last week’s Small Is Beautiful column, Hanan Lifshitz posed the question “Do SMBs Still Need the Middleman to Advertise?” It’s an especially timely question, given the recent Borrell report about the number of small businesses who cancel their contracts with online advertising providers within a year. The short version of my reaction to the study [...]

• Using Predictive Modeling In Seasonal Search Campaigns
  

  Optimal bidding for performance is a complex task for search marketers. When placing bids every day, you must be mindful of the volatility in the marketplace due to changing search traffic, competition, matching algorithms that vary across search engines and the changing needs of your business. For many of you, particularly if you work in [...]

• Google Fires Back At Bing, Launches “Explore Google Search”
  

  I wrote earlier that it was probably driving Google crazy to see people “amazed” that Bing is doing stuff that Google itself has long offered. Now Google’s fighting back. The first shot? A new Explore Google Search page. Google’s had help pages like this before. For example, this one still remains, showing [...]

• Five Steps To Leveraging Great Content For Better Rankings
  

  Recently, I was at an internet marketing convention where the question was posed to a panel: “As a search engine optimizer (SEO), what would you advise your clients to do if an extra million dollars fell into their lap?” The response from the SEOs on the panel was essentially “invest it all in creating great [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• NEWSFLASH! A Squidoo Policy Update, Squidoo
• Blogger is turning 10, Official Google Blog

Business Issues

• Yahoo Is Now Resorting To Selling Killer Domain Names On The Cheap, TechCrunch
• China attacks Google over "pornographic" links, Reuters
• Exhibition Over: Yahoo Gallery Closing, TechCrunch
• Yahoo! Vice President Anne Toth Testifies Before House Energy & Commerce Committee, Yahoo Press Releases

Local, Maps & Mobile

• A picture is worth millions of voices, Google LatLong
• bing maps evolution: insightful interview with gur kimchi, Bing Community

Link Building

• Revisiting Themed Links, SEOmoz
• Stratetic Link Building for SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Online Marketing Blog

Paid Search & Contextual

• Are AdSense Publishers Losing Out from Google Translate & Cache, Search Engine Roundtable
• Blogger Starts to Show Ads, Google Operating System

Searching

• Bing Search Improves on the Search Results Page, AltSearchEngines
• Off the Charts: Human Body Measurements, Wolfram|Alpha Blog
• Twitter Search Share: .001 Percent!, AllThingsD
• explore pane – a ribbon for search, Bing Community
• Microsoft veteran launches Twitter search engine, News.com
• New: 19th Century Digitised Newspapers from the UK Go Live on the Web, ResourceShelf
• Ranking Algorithm for the Realtime Web: OneRiot “Pulse Rank” Update, Blog.OneRiot.com

SEM Industry

• Google’s Top Search Quality Supports Question Google’s Team, Search Engine Roundtable
• Your Clients Hate You, Marketing Pilgrim

SEO & SEM

• Joining the SEO and PPC dots, Econsultancy
• SEO in 2020, SEOptimise
• Should I include my logo text using ‘alt’ or CSS?, YouTube
• Twitter SEO – the Future of Keywords, Search Engine Journal

Social Media

• Facebook hit by privacy blow, FT.com
• VideoSurf Brings Video Search to Twitter, VideoSurf Blog

Web Analytics

• Bagging the Conversion Elephant, Google Analytics Blog
• Dear Google: Please Take Feedburner to the Next Level, ProBlogger
• Speeding up: the basics and Analytics, Inside AdSense

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