SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 2, 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:

• Microsoft Wins Deal For Live Search To Be Default On HP Computers
  For all the excitement about Microsoft Live Search Cashback, I think a new announcement out today is far more important to Live Search’s potential growth. It will be the default search engine on Hewlett-Packard computers sold in North America beginning in January 2009, winning the deal from Yahoo. HP is…
• Google Advertising Itself Shows Maturation As A Company
  Photo by Mike Blumenthal. Used with permission. People tend to squeal with delight or its opposite when they see advertising in the wild for Google the company. It has happened precious few times: for Google Checkout, Goog-411 and most recently Google Transit, among a couple of other isolated cases….
• Click Tracking, Ads Quality And A Virtuous Cycle At Google
  The NY Times has a profile of several individuals behind the scenes at Google trying to monitor and safeguard the company’s financial performance and fine tune accordingly. The piece focuses on Nicholas Fox who’s a key member of the “ads quality” team and Hal Varian, chief economist at Google….
• Minnesota Town Opts-Out Of Google StreetView; Google Fights Back Against “Private Property” Claim In Another Case
  I got a chuckle out of this one. It seems that Google sent their cars that do StreetView photography for Google Maps into a private neighborhood in Minnesota. That neighborhood, North Oaks, demanded that Google remove all the images. As the roads are private, Google potentially trespassed to take the…
• Search Month: May 2008 Search News, In Review
  Search Month is a monthly newsletter that recaps stories covered on Search Engine Land over the past month. It’s also available by feed here. Below, news about Search Engine Land itself, then our 10 most popular stories from May 2008, then a major story for various search topics along with…
• May 2008: Search Engine Land’s Most Popular Stories
  Below are Search Engine Land’s 10 most popular stories from May 2008:…
• Expand Customer Relationships As Search Engines Evolve User Experience
  Last week, Microsoft Live Search expanded the description that appears below Wikipedia results and added navigational links to major headings within the Wikipedia article. Google has long been gently mocked by the search marketing community for ranking Wikipedia results highly for a large percentage of queries, but the general searching…

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• At long last, real-time stock quotes are here, Official Google Blog
• Google Apps: The Missing Manual, and More, Google Blogoscoped
• Kevin Fox of Gmail & FriendFeed on User Experience Design, Google Blogoscoped

Business Issues

• Analysts to Google: Buy Salesforce, eWeek
• California Privacy Chief Says Google Should Improve Disclosure, New York Times
• Facebook ‘violates privacy laws’, BBC NEWS
• Google Outed As Anonymous Ebay Critic, TechCrunch
• Google plans to open data centre in Austria, Telecompaper
• Yahoo ex-CEO looks to buy talent agency IMG-paper, Reuters
• Yahoo sued by Indian music company for copyright infringment, IDG

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Simple Advice, Better Local Search, Search Engine Guide
• Google To Launch Large Scale Geo-Services, TechCrunch
• Sneaky Google Earth Imagery Update, Google Earth Blog
• Google, Microsoft Fight to Take TV White Space for Beyond Wi-Fi , Bloomberg
• Hot off the press: News from Australia in Google Earth, Google LatLong
• Mobile Search Goes Vertical: GET & Thumbplay, altsearchengines.com
• Source: Gphone Delayed to 2009, TheStreet.com
• YPG Adds AgendiZe "Contact Widgets", Screenwerk

Link Building

• Can I Be Penalized if I Have Too Many Links on My Homepage?, Search Engine Roundtable

Paid Search & Contextual

• Give Us 5 Days, and We’ll Teach You How to Maximize Your PPC Results by Using Google Analytics, PPC Hero
• Revealed: How Israeli hi-tech guru inspired Google ‘magic formula’, Haaretz
• How Semantic & Intelligent Web are Changing Advertising, Jonathan Mendez’s Blog
• Limitations of Google’s Ad Preview Tool You Should Know, Rimm Kaufman

Searching

• What Does Google Say About You?, ProBlogger
• Wikipedia 3.0: You can now edit any page on Mahalo, Jason Calacanis
• Eurekster Back Up After 10 Days Offline; Rumors That Google Behind its Decline, Read/Write Web

SEM Industry

• Full List of SEM Scholarship Entries for 2008, Marketing Pilgrim
• Techmeme Goes SEO, Andy Beard
• An Update on Blog Stuff and Life Stuff, Small Business SEM
• Technorati Founder Dave Sifry Takes On Travel Guide Industry, TechCrunch
• Bringing a Community Together Who is Miles Apart For a Birthday Celebration, Search Marketing Gurus
• DigitalPoint Forums Suffers Major Outage, Search Engine Roundtable

SEO & SEM

• Debating the Relevancy of Google’s Organic Search Results, Search Marketing Sage
• SEM Boot Camp - Alphabet Soup and PPC, Search Engine Guide
• Google Doorway Pages New Definition, beu blog
• Be unique to avoid duplicate content, news.cnet.com
• Damage Your Competitors Google Image Rankings With Links, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google on Archiving and Retrieving Documents Using Your Camera Phone, SEO By The Sea
• How to Explore Backlinks Anchor Text, Search Engine Journal
• Trackur Version 2 Launches, Adds Trackur Trends, Read/Write Web

Social Media

• Developing Tactical Knowledge on Social Media Websites: A Three-Part Strategy for DIY Marketers, Dosh Dosh
• A Letter to Facebooks Founder, New York Times
• It’s Not Rocket Science, But It’s Our Work, Twitter Blog
• The Race To Social Network 2.0, Inquisitr
• The Future of Mobile Social Networking, Technology Review

Video, Music & Image Search

• Uninterrupted Viewing Experience, Official Google Video Blog

Web Analytics

• Not Sure Where to Start in Google Analytics? Here Are 5 Stats to Begin Analyzing Your Performance, PPC Hero

Other Items

• Sessions and snacks at Google I/O, Official Google Blog
• Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: June 1, 2008, Search Engine Roundtable

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

• How Search Engine Marketing Can Save the Economy
• Top 3 Unsung SEO Heroes of 2008
• The Ten Commandments of SEM 2.0
• Can Blogging Help You Find A Job
• Sure-fire Strategies to Pounce On Negative Search Engine Results
• Link Worth - What’s yours worth?
• 12 Ways to Not Make Digg’s Front Page
• What If SEO / Search Had Action Figures - Part Deux
• Bloggers Need to Accept Responsibility Too
• The Six Principles of Ethical SEO
• 12 Ways to write SEO Friendly Code
• Tools for Tracking Where Your Site is Mentioned
• the Sphinn Zone - enter at your own risk!
• Twitter Will Die And I’ll Tell You Why
• Twitter Magic: Force Your Readers to Click!
• The SEM 2.0 Pyramid (SEO + SMO + PPC)
• HubSpot’s Newest Tool: Press Release Grader
• Why Business and Corporate Blogs Fail - 5 tips from TopRank
• Deep Linking: How to Build Quality Links to Deeper Content