SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 12, 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:

• Yahoo SearchMonkey Accepts Videos, Games & Documents – No Application Required
  

  It just got a lot easier for non-developers to take advantage of the enhanced listings that Yahoo SearchMonkey offers. Yahoo has announced that flash video, games, and documents can now be embedded into Yahoo search results with only a few lines of code — you don’t have to create a special SearchMonkey app. Video is likely [...]

• Google Voice: Next Generation Telco?
  

  Maybe that headline overreaches a little but not entirely. For those that have been wondering whether Google’s GrandCentral acquisition, which the company made in mid 2007 and thereafter seemed to neglect, would suffer the same fate as Dodgeball or Jaiku . . . wonder no more. Using the GrandCentral infrastructure, and currently only available to existing [...]

• URL Rewrites and Redirects: The Gory Details (Part 2 of 2)
  

  Welcome back from Part 1, where I discussed in detail how to implement URL rewriting with Apache’s mod_rewrite module — complete with example rewrite rules, the more common regular expressions and how to use them. If you recall, I was just starting to get into rewrite rules for 301 redirects using the [R=301] flag. (Incidentally, [...]

• Act Like A Cybersquatter To Capture Your Long-Tail Brand Traffic!
  

  If your company has a major brand, domainers who exploit cybersquatting have likely already targeted your business. Their practices are often looked down upon, but if their dark powers weren’t effective, they wouldn’t make money. Still, you can learn the same black magic and turn it into good and profit for your company. In this down [...]

• Google Improves Image Search For iPhone & Android
  

  The Google Mobile blog announced they have made improvements to Google Image Search’s user interface and features for the iPhone and Android mobile devices. You can now see up to 20 images on a single page and when you click on the details of that image you can view a larger thumbnail, visit the [...]

• Google Explains How Search Ads Rank & Cost
  

  The Inside AdWords Blog posted a video from Google’s Chef Economist, Hal Varian. The video shows how Google prices and ranks search ads in the AdWords system based on quality and bid. This is a really basic overview of the AdWords model, but I personally find the video to be incredibly easy to [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Tasks tweaks: Move to list and split/merge, Official Gmail Blog
• Google Reader is your new watercooler, Official Google Reader Blog
• Google establishes Android team in Taiwan, News.com
• New Yahoo Home Page Caught In The Wild, TechCrunch

Business Issues

• Privacy Groups Rip Google’s Targeted Advertising Plan, PC World
• Mozilla Contemplates a Future Without Google, BusinessWeek
• Court rejects Yahoo bid to move trademark case, Houston Chronicle

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Car Stolen? Find It With Google Maps?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Tools for Local Search, ClickZ
• How The New Toolbar and On-Map Search Tool from MapQuest Saved My Trip To Chicago!, MapQuest Blog
• Searching for the pot o’ gold near you, Live Search

Link Building

• How to Find More Related Sites in Your Niche, Search Engine Journal
• Poll: Search Engines Should Pass Value From URL Shortening Services, Search Engine Roundtable

Paid Search & Contextual

• Never Get Bored With My PPC Tasks Checklist, PPC Hero
• Google AdWords API Sandbox Down Again, Search Engine Roundtable
• Visible Quality Score has Nothing to do with Relevancy – at least initially, Search Engine War

Searching

• A new real-time search engine – itpints, AltSearchEngines
• FuzzFind combines Google / Yahoo! / Live / del.icio.us, AltSearchEngines
• Social Search is the New Search, Aardvark

SEM Industry

• Twitter Landscape – An Indepth View of the Twitter Ecosystem, outspokenmedia.com
• Organic Keyword Research and Selection, outspokenmedia.com
• Affiliate Marketing and Performance Marketing, outspokenmedia.com
• Career Gut Check – SEM/SEO Employment Landscape, outspokenmedia.com
• Keynote Address – Matt Cutts, Google, outspokenmedia.com
• Live from PubCon South: Organic Link Building, Search Marketing Sage
• Live from PubCon South: The Twitter and Microblogging Revolution, Search Marketing Sage
• Top Ten Techniques For Writing Headlines That Rock!, outspokenmedia.com

SEO & SEM

• Clarifying turnaround times for content URL removals, Live Search Webmaster Center Blog
• Recession Busters:SEO Style, Search Marketing Sage
• Universal Image Optimization, beu blog
• Google’s Matt Cutts: Top 5 Things to do to Optimize Your Site, SEO.com
• Image SEO: Keep Those Photos Above the Fold, Small Business SEM
• The Big, Bad List of Pre-SEO Questions You Need to Answer, Part IV, Search Engine Guide

Social Media

• ffwd Hops on Twitter Bandwagon with Twitmatic, NewTeeVee
• Welcome to Your New Home Page, Facebook
• Spoon feeding: Facebook redesign brings feeds (and ads) to the masses, VentureBeat
• How Much Is A Suggested Slot On Twitter Worth? Jason Calacanis Offers $250,000., TechCrunch
• Introducing the Google Friend Connect API, Social Web Blog
• Royal Caribbean’s Brand Evangelist Loyalty Program: Erroneous or Brilliant?, Techipedia
• Twitter Apps of the Day, ResourceShelf

Video, Music & Image Search

• A Look At The Improved MySpace Music, TechCrunch
• Hulu Embraces Social Networking, Wall Street Journal

Web Analytics

• Find Out When Your Campaigns Suck with GA Custom Reports, Analytics Talk
• adCenter Analytics Beta To Close, adCenter Analytics Blog

Other Items

• A Google Founder’s Gift – Money and His DNA, New York Times

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

• The flip side of guaranteed SEO
• BBC will 'aggressively link' to other UK sites
• StumbleUpon Adds Share
• Analytics is the key!
• When Did Delicious Start ‘Silent Bans’?
• What does punctuation have to do with SEO?
• Twitter search is here? Well for some…