SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 20, 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:

• Ex-Googler: Google Depends Too Much On Data Over Instinct For Design
  

  Does Google depend too much on data over design instinct? Yes, says former Googler Douglas Bowman, who posted a goodbye note to the company on his last day there today. From his post: Without a person at (or near) the helm who thoroughly understands the principles and elements of Design, a company eventually runs out of [...]

• Microsoft IE8 Browser Seeks To ‘Accelerate’ Searching, Yahoo Adds ‘Visual Shortcuts’ To Search Box
  

  Microsoft’s new browser IE 8 is now in general release. There are loads of features, which I won’t go into at length. Danny did a preliminary overview of the search and ad-related features of IE8 already, which I’m sure he’ll revisit at some point. And the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg offers a generally favorable [...]

• Search In Pictures: St. Patrick’s Day, Mozilla With Google & Schmidt With Charlie Rose
  

  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. Eric Schmidt with Charlie Rose:

  Google & Mozilla:

  St Patricks Day at Yahoo:

  PHP Stuffed Animal at Yahoo! Dome in [...]

• Spring Is Here, Search Engine Logos For The Day
  

  Today in the Northern Hemisphere, it is the first day of Spring. The search engines, excluding Yahoo, have special logos for the day. Let me share them with you. Google’s logo was designed by Eric Carle:

  AOL has a Flash animated logo:

• How Live Search Penalties Work
  

  The Live Search blog posted a comprehensive guide on how to determine if your site is penalized in Live Search and if so, what actions you can take to remedy the issue. I’ll highlight some of the key points in this excellent blog post.

  Microsoft said, “most webmasters who get penalized know why it happened.” First [...]

• Getting Links AND Content From Flickr
  

  You can get more than just links from social media. You can also get really great content. And one of the best places to find free content is on Flickr. There are tons of ways to use Flickr. If you can take a great photo, you can use Flickr to build inbound links and get your [...]

• Hey Usability Professionals: Get With The SEO Program
  

  For over 10 years, I have been trying to convince my clients, colleagues, friends, family, and my 2 cats that SEO and website usability go hand in hand, that they are intricately related. And I have even chastised colleagues and clients for not considering users during the optimization process. I have seen many of my [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Alibaba.com Plans To Boost Spending, Wall Street Journal
• Introducing the OpenSocial Development Environment, OpenSocial API Blog
• New in Labs: Undo Send, Official Gmail Blog
• Yahoo Answers adds targeted questions, Small Business SEM

Business Issues

• Android co-founder in Google Ventures?, Reuters
• Ballmer Says Microsoft Can Experiment in Web Search, Bloomberg
• Goodbye Google, stopdesign
• Google: Beware the eBay Curse, BusinessWeek
• MSN Search Out of Touch, SearchNewz
• YouTube Exec: Google ‘Not Good at Content’, MediaWeek

Local, Maps & Mobile

• "Save" Is The New "Print". Using The Enhanced MapQuest4Mobile With My Places To View Saved Maps & Directions On Your BlackBerry, MapQuest Blog
• Another Sneaky Google Earth Imagery Update – March 2009, Google Earth Blog
• Google Maps Looking for Local Inventory, Mike Blumenthal
• Mapping the Madness returns, Google LatLong
• Google pulls some street images, BBC NEWS
• Tsunami ‘trigger’ spotted on Google Earth, New Scientist

Link Building

• 5 Link Building Tips for New Websites – Draft, Online Marketing Blog
• Can’t Get That Golden Link? Go After a Link Off the Golden Link, Search Engine Roundtable
• Politics and Link Campaigns in the Blogosphere, SEOmoz

Paid Search & Contextual

• Spring Into Action: Online Marketing for Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, & Graduation, YouTube
• The impact of display URLs on PPC campaign performance, Econsultancy
• AdWords API sandbox – Best practices, AdWords API Blog
• Don’t Dig Around for the Stats You Need in Google Analytics. Build Custom Reports!, PPC Hero
• How Can You Save Time and Money When Managing PPC? Use Ad Scheduling in AdWords!, PPC Hero

Searching

• Subscriptions now available in beta, Official Google Checkout Blog

SEM Industry

• Liveblogging Schedule for SES New York, outspokenmedia.com
• Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: March 20, 2009, Search Engine Roundtable

SEO & SEM

• How Searchers’ Queries Might Influence Customized Google Search Results, SEO By The Sea
• More than one H1 on a page: good or bad?, YouTube
• 404 Pages Should Not Return 200 Status Codes, Search Engine Roundtable
• SEO : Power of Keywords, Links and Content, Daily SEO Tip
• Whiteboard Friday – Query Deserves Freshness, SEOmoz
• Williams-Sonoma: WSHome.com Site Review, SEO.com

Social Media

• Facebook Poll: 94% Of Users Don’t Like Redesign, TechCrunch
• Flaw makes Twitter vulnerable to serious viral attack, The Register
• Government Employees Banned From Using The Social Networking Tools They’re Told To Use, TechDirt
• Nielsen: Twitter’s growing really, really, really, really fast, News.com
• Sharing RSS feeds on LinkedIn Groups, The LinkedIn Blog
• Yes, Twitter’s Business Model Is To Be Acquired, and Yes, It Will Be, Traffick

Video, Music & Image Search

• March Madness! YouTube Gets Live Video Via Silverlight, newteevee.com
• Watching Video on Windows Mobile and Nokia S60 Phones, YouTube Blog
• comScore Media Metrix Ranks Top 50 U.S. Web Properties for February 2009, comScore
• MySpace Launches In-Browser Photo Editing Tools, TechCrunch
• Truveo Releases Most Twittered Videos Web Slice for IE8, AOL Corporate
• YouTube Product Manager Talks YouTube Business Uses, WebProNews

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

• Escaping from “Permanent” link building Trap
• SEO Quality Indicators & The Heap Paradox
• Getting Links AND Content From Flickr
• Stumpedia Launches New Advertising Model – Pay Per Chat
• Dumbass of the Week – Google
• An Interview with the Distilled SEO Team
• Twitter, the Most Important Website Since Google?
• Befriending PPC for SEO benefits
• Google News No Longer Requires Numbers In The URL
• Link Building: Mislead to Believe