SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 28, 2012

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

• Google Makes Android Maps Cleaner, More Personal

  If Siri is the differentiating feature of iPhones, then Google Maps (and Navigation) are that for Android. It’s the most popular Android app as well as unquestionably the most useful. Today Google announced a new release of Maps for Android (6.5) featuring a richer UI and other improvements. Most of those have to be experienced, […]
• Top 3 Paid Search Marketing Features Underused By In-House SEM’s

  Are in-house search engine marketers taking full advantage of all the features and tools at their fingertips? Being more organized, efficient, or better informed may not require additional special tools or staff, but just better utilization of the fantastic features already provided for free by search engines. In-house marketers are always under pressure to do […]

• Getting Organized: Paid Search, User Intent & The Search Funnel

  There is no shortage of literature covering: How to organize a paid search program to reflect your site map and product offerings How to maximize quality score How to categorize queries by user intent (informational, navigational, transactional) Yet, I have not found any literature addressing how to put those three concepts together. In a world […]

• B2B Blogger’s Guide To Turning Tweets Into Rockstar Conference Coverage

  So, you’re craving a surge of fresh, unique, valuable content on the front page of your business’s B2B blog…but scraping the bottom of the proverbial barrel for blog post topics that aren’t blatantly self-promotional or boring as ever. One solution is to attend a few industry conferences, conventions, trade shows, seminars, or networking events throughout the year […]

• Google Discussion Forum Snippets Now Showing “Top Answers”

  Google has expanded the search descriptions to show the “top answer” and sometimes the “question” for discussion forum like search results. For example, a search for [“incoming search terms”] in Google returns results from Google Groups and StackOverflow and in those snippets, it shows the “top answer” listed in the forum. Here is a picture: […]

• Updated – Google Research: Even With A #1 Organic Ranking, Paid Ads Provide 50% Incremental Clicks

  When marketers have scrutinized Google’s research on how organic and paid search results work together — the search giant concluded that nixing the paid ads would result in a 89% drop in clicks — it’s been clear there’s more to the story. What happens if your brand is the top organic result for the keyword? […]

• App Search Engine Appolicious Introduces “AdWords For Apps”

  Appolicious, an independent apps marketplace and search engine, has introduced “AdWords for Apps”: a new PPC advertising system for app developers and publishers. The company says it’s the largest independent apps engine and market. Chomp, which was recently acquired by Apple, was its primary competitor (other than iTunes and Google Play). Between iOS and Android […]

• Google Testing Toggle For Search Options & Tools In Search Results

  Google is testing a new user interface feature for the search results where they hide the search tools and options from the left hand side and let you toggle them open and close with a click of a mouse. Michel Wester spotted this and posted a video and screen shots of how it works. Here […]

Recent Headlines From MarTech, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

• The Email Metric You Should Be Tracking, But Aren’t
• Pinterest: We’re “Actively Working” To Fight Spam; It’s A “Tremendous Priority”
• Yelp Offers More Detailed Engagement Metrics To Business Owners
• President Obama Joins Pinterest
• Report: Facebook’s Timeline Gives Brands 46% Higher Engagement Per Post

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Giving you more insight into your Google Account activity, Official Google Blog
• Google I/O Confirmed 20-minute Sellout, Will Stream Programs Live, thenextweb.com
• Moving the Google+ Hangouts API Out of Preview, Google+ Developers Blog

Business Issues

• Facebook’s New S-1: An ‘Unfavorable Outcome’ In The Yahoo Patent Lawsuit ‘Could Be Material To Our Business’, TechCrunch
• Facebook Said to Halt Secondary-Market Share Trading This Week, Bloomberg
• Russian SEO Market Valued At 20 Billion (Rubles), Russian Search Tips
• Yahoo-Geddon: Leaders Debate Layoffs and More Today, AllThingsD

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Microsoft’s secret weapon against Google Maps, Computerworld Blogs
• Digitalglobe Providing Broader Content Across Microsoft Bing Maps And Xbox, DigitalGlobe News Room

Link Building

• Outreach Letters for Link Building [Real Examples], SEOmoz

SEM Industry

• Google’s Webmaster YouTube Channel Passes 7 Million Views, Search Engine Roundtable

SEO & SEM

• Firefox adopting secure search will allow snake oil SEOs to thrive, stateofsearch.com
• Managing Sites in the DFA API, Google Ads Developer Blog
• Should I disallow Googlebot from crawling slower pages?, YouTube
• The Lowdown on Structured Data and Schema.org – Your Questions Answered!, SEOmoz

Social Media

• Social Media Analytics – An Overview of Relevance, Microsoft Advertising Blog
• How Should Marketers Approach Google+ Now That The Brand Pages Are Rapidly Growing?, Search Engine People

Video, Music & Image Search

• Google Abandons Music Search in India, Digital Inspiration