SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 19, 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 Goes Rainbow For Gay-Related Searches
  

  Google Operating System notes that Google is once again flying rainbow colors to support gay pride celebrations happening this month throughout the world. Certain searches get topped by a rainbow-colored divider, symbolic of rainbow flags often flown by those in the gay community or in support of them. To see the colors, try searches for gay, [...]

• Google Truncating Display URLs In Search Results
  

  Google has always truncated the display URLs in the search results when it went beyond two lines, I believe. But now new reports from several sources are noticing that Google may be truncating the URLs to a single line, when applicable. Below is a screen shot of Google shortening URLs. As you can see, [...]

• Search In Pictures: Yahoo Cast, Bing Messiah Girls, & XL Google Rubic Cube
  

  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. Dual Yahoo Casts: Bing Beer Messiah Girls?: Large Google Rubic Cubes:: Italian Yahoo Bikes:: “If Binging Is Wrong, I Don’t Want [...]

• Google Now Indexing Flash From External Files
  

  The Google Webmaster Central blog finally blogged Google is now indexing the content of files that some SWF files load externally, technically from “external resource loading”. Flash often loads external files to generate what you see in the SWF, so if the SWF is calling an external HTML, XML, another SWF, etc files, Google [...]

• The Impact Of The Internet On Human Behavior
  

  CNN’s online news site recently posted a poll that asked, “Are you tired of social networking?” When I had checked their results, it showed that 74% chose “YES.” Yet according to Inside Twitter by Alex Cheng, Mark Evans and Harshdeep Singh, after analyzing information disclosed on 11.5 million Twitters accounts, 72.5% [...]

• Google Flipper: A Visual Version Of News?
  

  TechCrunch is reporting that “Flipper” is a visual version of Google News, enabling people to see images of publications — and presumably “flip” through the pages accordingly. Immediately I was struck by two thoughts, this is somewhat like Google’s News Timeline, which offers a more visual presentation than the current News, and that it bears a [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Google translates Persian, Official Google Blog
• Microsoft looks to give MSN fresh wings, News.com
• Most Our Readers Like Yahoo’s New Home Page, Search Engine Roundtable
• New York Times Updates "Skimmer" Prototype, ResourceShelf
• Wikipedia Getting Video within Months, Read/Write Web

Business Issues

• Microsoft’s Ballmer Says He Might Spend 10 Percent Of Operating Income On Search, paidContent.org
• Sergey Brin’s Wife 23 And Me Gets Another Investment From Google, Business Insider
• Yahoo! Inc. Annual Meeting of Stockholders, Yahoo Press Releases
• Build an app with the Bing API, win $10,000, Ars Technica
• China Disables Some Google Functions, New York Times
• Google to step up anti-porn efforts in China, The Associated Press

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Dump the pump with new transit agencies in Google Maps, Google LatLong

Link Building

• What’s the preferred way to check for links to my site?, YouTube

Paid Search & Contextual

• New Interface Thursdays: Finding features from the previous interface, Inside AdWords
• Facebook: Our targeted ads aren’t creepy, News.com
• Google Working on Mobile AdWords Management Interface, Search Engine Roundtable

Searching

• Streamlining the Inbox, Facebook Blog
• Twitter Search Share: What’s the Real Number?, AllThingsD
• Authors Are More Visible in Google News, Google Operating System
• Cuil for Low Bandwidth Connections, Cuil Blog
• Who’s Really Winning the Search Race?, InternetNews.com
• Why I still Use Altavista Search Engine, www.seoco.co.uk

SEM Industry

• Poll Results On How Google Views SEOs (Innocent or Guilty), Search Engine Roundtable
• SEO A-Team, Bruceclay.com.au
• The Only Google-Thing Evaporating is Our Trust, AIM Clear Blog

SEO & SEM

• 9 Reasons Your Website Can Have a High Bounce Rate, Search Engine Journal
• Are 404 Pages Always Bad for SEO?, SEOmoz
• Google News "Article Too Long" Webmaster Tools Errors, Search Engine Roundtable
• How Search Engines Might Identify and Handle Soft 404s and Login-Required Pages, SEO By The Sea
• SEO Insanity : Confusing Correlation With Causation, The SEO Scoop

Social Media

• With Spacebook, NASA opts for secure, homegrown social networking, Federal Computer Week
• 3 basic ingredients for an online social community to exist and thrive, Econsultancy
• Launching Facebook in Persian, Facebook

Video, Music & Image Search

• Release Notes: 6/18/09, YouTube Blog
• Nearby on Your Phone, Flickr Blog

Web Analytics

• Update regarding AdWords cost data reporting, Google Analytics Blog
• Google Analytics Gets a New Site, Google Analytics Blog

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

• 9 Reasons Your Website Can Have a High Bounce Rate
• How to Blog With Authenticity Without Getting Fired
• A common search reputation management timeline
• Kenshoo Makes PPC Complexities Easier to Manage
• Joining the SEO and PPC dots
• 10 Reasons For Editing Your Published Blog Posts
• Import Analytics Goals into Adwords
• Yahoo Selling Off Domain Names : Unloads Contests.com for $380K
• Quality SEO Pays for Itself
• Doing Things The Right Way — or The Google Way (was: How To Lose Trust)