SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 25, 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:

• 26 People Who Mislead You On Twitter
  

  Earlier this month, I covered various ways people are spamming Twitter in my Twitter’s Real Time Spam Problem article. Since then, I’ve been diligently reporting some of the more annoying spam I see. Despite this, none of the reported accounts have been closed. So, it’s time for a public spam report [...]

• Kayak Says Bing Isn’t Playing Air Fair, Hakia Sees Near Mirror Image
  

  Kayak travel search launched a formal attack on Microsoft’s Bing Travel yesterday in an article that appeared on Wired, Kayak to Bing: Stop Copying Us!. Apparently, Kayak’s executives are more than a little steamed by the eerily similar look and feel, and even went so far as to put Microsoft on legal notice (presumably a [...]

• AOL’s Truveo Relaunches As Improved Video Search Destination
  

  According to comScore the average watcher of online video in the US took in 385 minutes-worth in April. And according to Nielsen, in May, “year-over-year, unique viewers, total streams, streams per viewer and time per viewer were up, led by a 49 percent growth in time per viewer.” The leading video site is Google/YouTube by [...]

• Google Export Adviser Beta
  

  Google has released a new tool for AdWords advertisers, focused on international (not US based) advertising. The tool is named Google Export Advisor and aims at helping businesses “reach new markets and grow internationally.” The tool combines the Google Keyword Tool, Google Translator and Google Traffic Estimator to come up with a neat [...]

• Google Gives Presentation On Search Engine Optimization
  

  The Google Grants Blog posted that they have given a presentation in their D.C. office on search engine optimization. The presentation was to help educate a group of “issue campaign managers” on the principles of SEO. Galen Panger from the Google for Non-Profits team posted the 31 slides they presented to this group. [...]

• Google Wants Your Feedback On Webmaster Central
  

  The Google Webmaster Central blog is asking SEOs and Webmasters to submit and vote on feedback at the Product Ideas for Webmaster Central. When you go to the products idea page, you will be asked to sign in to submit or vote on submissions. The more votes a submission receives, the more likely Google will [...]

• Shopping Search 2.0: Finding Deals & Coupons On Twitter
  

  It didn’t take long for commerce to move online when the WWW was invented in the early ’90s, and it hasn’t taken long for the same migration to happen as new social networks become important parts of our everyday lives. Don’t be surprised if, in the not too distant future, you find yourself using social [...]

• Google Takes On Tourism With City Tours Experiment
  

  City Tours is a new addition to Google Labs that puts Google squarely in the tourism business: Give it a city name, and Google not only suggests sites to see, but it also maps out a multi-day itinerary and proposes a minute-by-minute travel schedule for you to follow. And what’s really impressive is that City Tours [...]

• Cuil Maplines: A Good Idea That Needs Work
  

  Cuil has announced an interesting new map-based tool called Maplines. On some queries, the Mapline shows in the right column of Cuil’s search results above the Timeline feature. What’s a Mapline. Here’s Cuil’s explanation: “Just as our Timelines show a concept across time, our Maplines show a concept across a map.” It’s an interesting idea, but seems [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Google Account Recovery via SMS, Google Operating System
• Google Voice invites on their way, Official Google Blog
• New Yahoo Homepage Spotted In The Wild, TechCrunch

Business Issues

• WSJ publisher calls Google ‘digital vampire’, Crain’s New York Business
• Yahoo Unstealths Its Data Center Efficiency, Data Center Knowledge
• Bing Product Manager Bolts To eBay, Business Insider
• Exclusive: Yahoo Working on Major Brand Overhaul (Pretty Please, No More Yodeling!), Allthingsd.com
• Google Probing Outage in China, Wall Street Journal
• Google Spending to Rise; YouTube Big Expense, AllThingsD
• Google’s content trial delayed, BBC NEWS

Local, Maps & Mobile

• rendering historic maps on bing, Bing Community

Link Building

• Leveraging Social Media for SEO – All Links Are Not Equal, TechLINKS

Paid Search & Contextual

• Bing Brings More Conversions at Lower Costs, The Search Agents
• Speeding up: Retaining your visitors with great user experience, Inside AdSense

Searching

• A Moment with the Wolfram|Alpha Developers (Part 3), Wolfram|Alpha Blog
• Go Beyond Google: 50 Excellent Health Search Engines, X-Ray Technician Schools
• Kayak Says Microsoft’s Bing Travel Search Is Too Similar, paidContent.org
• Total Search Queries Are Up For Facebook And Down For Google, paidContent.org

SEM Industry

• ShopLocal Now a Search Agency (Sort Of), Screenwerk
• First Round of SEM Scholarship Contest Entries Posted, Marketing Pilgrim
• Search Marketing Becoming Ultimate Bartering Goldmine During Tough Economy, SEM Geek
• VoCampers Converge at Yahoo! Headquarters in Sunnyvale, Yahoo Search Blog

SEO & SEM

• New Data Feed Interface Improvements, Google Base Blog
• 5 Tips For Better Press Releases, The SEO Scoop
• Bing’s Traffic Spike From Fake Spam Tests?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Can the geographic location of a web server affect SEO?, YouTube
• Keyword Research – How To Spot New Search & SEO Trends, SEO Book
• Search Engine Optimisation PDF Guide, Hobo
• Will having my software in low quality directories hurt my ranking?, YouTube
• Win the Google Quality Score Battle – For Real This Time, Search Engine Journal

Social Media

• Habitat sorry for Iran Tweeting, BBC NEWS
• Hedge fund managers betting Twitter will give them an edge in rapid trading, Telegraph
• Twitter litter, Kottke.org

Video, Music & Image Search

• AOL Video Search Site Truveo Relaunches In 17 Nations; Lands Deal With Univision, paidContent.org
• iPhone 3GS boosts mobile YouTube uploads by 400%, Music Ally
• Mobile Uploads to YouTube Increase Exponentially, YouTube Blog

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

• The 6 Spheres of Social Media Marketing
• XML Sitemap Assisted Redirects
• Hello world! There is no Europe!
• How to Export Google Search Results to Excel
• A reason to integrate offline & online advertising – “Ad hijacking”
• Small Business SEO: Costs, Expectations & Realities
• Google countermeasures Bing with “Explore Google Search” & More
• Wordtracker Launches New Keyword Tool
• Google's New Export Adviser Tool Review
• Less is not more in Mobile SEO: 2 Worst Practices to Avoid