SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 5, 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:

• Did Bing Leapfrog Yahoo? Not Exactly
  

  We saw the same headline, based on data issued by StatCounter from Thursday. These data reportedly show that yesterday the share of searches went like this: Google: 71.47 percent Bing: 16.28 percent Yahoo: 10.22 percent On a global basis the company said it saw a similar trend: Google: 87.62 percent Bing: 5.62 percent Yahoo: 5.13 percent To get a reality check on these [...]

• Google Celebrates 25 Years Of Tetris With Doodle
  

  June 6th with be the 25-year anniversary of the game Tetris. If you visit Google Australia, where it is already June 6th, you will see a special Google logo, a Tetris Doodle. The game Tetris was released on June 6, 1984 by programmer and designer, Alexey Pajitnov. Expect the other Google search portals to [...]

• Bing A Google-Killer? Get Real
  

  Yes, this is another article about Bing. But I’m going to take a different spin. Instead of doing another expert review of the quality of the results and the cool interface like all the other search geeks (I use the term with affection), I want to review Bing the way that normal people will. So [...]

• A Case Study In Changing URL Structure
  

  In one of the SMX videos available in the member’s area of Search Engine Land, several panelists noted that a shorter URL is more likely to be clicked in the SERPs than a longer one. That is, if you have a URL like

  http://www.yourdomain.com/2009/03/19/article-title/

  it is less likely to get clicked than the following one, which is [...]

• Google Gets “Pole Position” On The Pre
  

  Tomorrow Palm’s Pre (comeback) smartphone will go on sale through US carrier Sprint. In early 2010 it will reportedly come to Verizon, which opens it up to a much larger market. To date, the Pre has received mostly positive reviews, though, as with the G1 and soon ION/G2, reviewers seem to agree that it falls [...]

• Yahoo Adds Apps & Widgets To Mail, My Yahoo & More
  

  If you’ve ever wanted to send money via Paypal without leaving your email In box, or if you wanted to publish a blog post without leaving your My Yahoo page, today’s announcement from Yahoo is sure to put a smile on your face. Yahoo is adding a number of third-party apps and widgets to several [...]

• Search In Pictures: Bing Trucks, Cerf At Governo de Minas & Yahoo Sweets
  

  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. Bing Truck Ads: Bing Truck Ads: Google’s Vint Cerf: Yahoo’s Tasty Sweets:

• Bid Simulator Comes To Google AdWords
  

  Google AdWords has been testing a beta feature since late May known as “bid simulator.” The feature basically shows you how many impressions and how your ad position would look, if you increased or decreased your bid price. Here is a screen capture I grabbed from the reference guide on this new beta [...]

• DMOZ (Open Directory Project) Turns 11 Years Old Today
  

  The DMOZ Blog informed us that the largest human volunteer edited web directory has turned 11 years old today. The Open Directory Project, aka DMOZ.org, launched on June 5, 1998, eleven years ago today. DMOZ boosts tens of thousands of volunteer editors and millions of websites in more than a half-million categories and content in [...]

• YouTube Leads Surge Of Online Video Watching In April
  

  Online video watching jumped by 16% in April according to comScore, with YouTube getting “a significant increase in video viewing” during the month. Overall, comScore says U.S. Internet users watched almost 17 billion online videos in April, up 16% from March. YouTube’s share of that increase was about 900 million additional video views. Despite the [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Bring Back iGoogle’s Tabs, Search Engine Roundtable
• Danger: Mac and Linux builds available, Chromium Blog
• Google Finance Sheds Its Beta Label Three Years After Launch; Still Can’t Touch Yahoo, TechCrunch
• New Open Apps Launch on My Yahoo! & Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Developer Network Blog

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Introducing the orkut mobile app, Orkut Blog
• Announcing the Google Qualified JS Maps Developer program, Google Geo Developers Blog
• bing maps imagery release – may 2009, Bing Community
• Introducing the orkut Mobile App, Official Google Mobile Blog
• Whiteboard Friday – Local Search Inclusion with David Mihm, SEOmoz

Link Building

• The New Link Adventures Of Old Debra, Link Spiel

Paid Search & Contextual

• First Glance: How Pay-Per-Click Marketers Should React to Bing, PPC Hero
• New Interface Thursdays: Exploring the Ads tab, Inside AdWords
• IAB Reports 5 Percent Decline in U.S. Online Ad Revenues For First Quarter 2009, TechCrunch

Searching

• Tip: Slice and dice your mail with search operators, Official Gmail Blog
• Did Bing Just Leapfrog Yahoo Search?, TechCrunch
• Research: If At First You Don’t Succeed, Let the Search Engine Try, ResourceShelf
• What’s Next in Search?, ClickZ

SEO & SEM

• Differential Diagnosis #3: Mysterious Rankings in Google & Bing, SEOmoz
• Google about to crack down on paid links in Spain?, blog.arhg.net
• Froogle 2.0: Google Declares War On Amazon, SEO ROI
• Google Squared Is Live: What SEOs & Searchers Need To Know, Search Engine Roundtable
• How many pages can Google index from one site?, YouTube
• Is PageRank Sculpting Dead? Inc. Matt Cutts Transcript, andybeard.eu
• Malware A Growing Issue: Yes, Major Impact on SEO, Search Engine Roundtable
• Refresh, Renew, Redesign, The SEO Scoop
• SEO Starter Guide now available in 40 languages, Official Google Webmaster Central Blog
• Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: June 5, 2009, Search Engine Roundtable

Social Media

• Get Your Friends’ Status Updates Wherever You Are, Facebook
• Modeling The True Value Of Social Networks: 2009 Edition, TechCrunch
• Social Media, Your Brand and Your Employees, Marketing Pilgrim

Video, Music & Image Search

• New: Frame your favorite photos., My Yahoo! Blog
• Picasa Web Albums stays big, gets faster, Official Google Blog

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

• Conducting An SEO Audit To Troubleshoot Problems & Tune-Up Performance
• 11 Sources of Duplicate Content You’re Probably Unaware of
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• The History Of Social Media