SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 11, 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:

• MSN Overhauls City Guides, Integrates With Live Search
  

  MSN and Live Search probably don’t get enough attention in the local search field, but the reality is that there’s a solid core of usage thanks to the default experience offered on many PCs — Windows OS and Internet Explorer. (On a purely anecdotal level, an old blog post I wrote about adding a business [...]

• Google’s Searchology Event: An “Insider’s Perspective On Search”
  

  Tomorrow from 10am – 11:30am PDT, Google will live stream their latest Searchology event. We will be live blogging at the event, so if you can’t watch the Google webcast, check here for all the news as it unfolds. In 2007, Google held their first Searchology event, where they announced universal search. Universal search, of course, [...]

• Google News Clusters Changes User Interface & Features
  

  Google News has changed how they display clusters of news. If you take a look at a news cluster, such as this one you will now notice links across the top that read “Full Coverage of articles, blogs, local sources, images, quotes and videos.” You can then click view more articles within blogs, [...]

• Hackers Take Control Of Google Morocco For Several Hours
  

  TechCrunch reported that Google Morocco was taken over by hackers for several hours. The reports say that the hackers gained access to Google’s domain name through the country’s registrar, NIC.ma. The DNS information was then changed to point to a different server until Google regained access and pointed the domain name back to the Google [...]

• PPC Agencies: Not One Size Fits All
  

  Hiring the right PPC agency requires knowing what your firm wants out of paid search and finding a firm with the roots and tools to do that job well. One size does not fit all.

• Attribution Alchemy: Mining Your Sales Funnel
  

  Many online advertisers find themselves in the never-ending and seemingly unattainable quest to achieve the best marketing mix across all channels, including paid search. They continually struggle with monetizing paid search in terms of sales and customer engagement, wondering how to measure real ROI against these two metrics. However, most marketers don’t realize that the [...]

• Twitter Is A Local Search Power Tool
  

  How many good conversations have you had where one person spends the entire time talking? That’s not a conversation, of course. That’s someone simply spouting off. A conversation requires dialogue, people taking turns talking and listening. The online world is no different, and we’ve reached a point where true online conversations occur all the time. The days [...]

• Happy Mother’s Day Logos From Google & Other Search Engines
  

  The Search Engine Land team would like to wish you a Happy Mother’s Day today. As tradition, I like to post the various logos from the search industry, to help celebrate the day. Here are the Mother’s Day logos.

• Fights In The Google Monopoly Debate Miss Key Points
  

  The noise about whether Google is a monopoly that needs to be controlled continues to ramp up, with Google itself releasing a “charm offensive” set of slides after its lobbying using those slides was outed by Consumer Watchdog. I’ll cover that below, but as I watch the debate continue over whether Google [...]

• An Insider’s Look At SMX Advanced: Michelle Robbins
  

  Continuing our series of behind-the-scenes insights from our SMX Advanced programming team, today we have a Q&A with Michelle Robbins, Third Door Media’s Technology Director, and the operations whiz behind Search Engine Land, Sphinn and our other web sites. You are the Technology Director at Third Door Media. Tell us what that means. Michelle Robbins: Primarily, [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Bloglines Offline for Hours (and Outsourced to China), Workbench
• Google Chrome Has the Most Effective Updater, Google Operating System
• Google Offering Training Services for Hyperlocal News in Europe, Read/Write Web

Business Issues

• Layoffs Hit MySpace, TechCrunch
• Nuts: Twitter Inventor About To Launch His Next Project, Code-named Squirrel, TechCrunch
• Ping – Should Design Be Held Back by a Tyranny of Data?, New York Times
• Yahoo Data Center Planned for New York, Wall Street Journal
• Gagging on Google, FT.com
• Yahoo sued over failing to delete false profile, TechRadar UK
• Google’s Competition is One Click Away, Google Operating System
• NBC Invests In Video Search Startup EveryZing And Signs Up As Its Biggest Customer, TechCrunch
• Yahoo Could Be Liable For Lewd and Libelous Profile, MediaPost
• Google in Talks with New York Times, Washington Post, AllThingsD

Local, Maps & Mobile

• May 2009 Imagery Update for Google Earth, Google Earth Blog
• Turing YP Sites into Recommendations Engines, Screenwerk
• Google plans space exploration gadget to help mobile phone users study night skies, Telegraph
• Survey: one in five US households are cellphone only, Ars Technica
• AOL Debuts Online Map to the Stars, MediaPost
• Google Map: It is the best of times, it is the worst of times – Swine Flu and Maps, Mike Blumenthal

Link Building

• How Long Do Old Links Last In SEO?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Link Building Tips for News SEO, Online Marketing Blog

Paid Search & Contextual

• 3 Strikes and You’re Out: How to Get More PPC Impressions Safely, Search Engine Journal
• AdWords Account Structure: The Next Steps, SEOptimise
• Invalid clicks and activity, adCenter Blog for Advertisers
• Learn How to Import Your Google Analytics Goals into AdWords Conversion Tracking, PPC Hero
• PPC Agencies: The Roots Determine the Tree, Rimm Kaufman

Searching

• New Search Service Aims to Answer Tough Questions, New York Times
• Why Does My Google Profile Not Show For A Google Search?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Make the Most of Advanced Google Date Operator, Daily SEO Tip

SEM Industry

• Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: May 8, 2009, Search Engine Roundtable

SEO & SEM

• SEO: It’s Just Like Fishing, SEO.com
• WordStream: Keywords Management Made Easy, Search Engine Journal
• Duplicate Content Issues Visualized: Collection of Useful Infographics, Search Engine Journal
• Keywords and Domains, SEO.com
• mozRank and PageRank for Metrics Driven SEO, SEOmoz
• Poll: Can You Beat a #1 Wikipedia Google Ranking?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Q&A: Google Webmaster Tools Reporting Odd Backlinks?, Search Engine Journal
• Why Descriptive Titles are Important, SEOish

Social Media

• Why Tweetmeme Sucks For Marketers, andybeard.eu
• Jew Haters Welcome At Facebook, As Long As They Aren’t Lactating, TechCrunch
• Open Letter To Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, THE CUBAN REVOLUTION

Video, Music & Image Search

• Flickr turns 5.25, Yodel Anecdotal

Other Items

• A Second Google Chrome Comic Book, Google Blogoscoped

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

• Aaron Wall Exclusive Interview on Social Media Marketing
• Social Media Dream Job at Murphy-Goode Matched by Dream Applicant
• StumbleUpon Essential Basics, A Beginners Guide
• WordStream: Keywords Management Made Easy
• SEO is nothing without conversion optimisation | I-Optimise
• I’m An Internet Celebrity Because Google Says So!
• Twitter Plans to Squash Google’s Spider?
• Optimizing for Facebook Share Preview
• How To Make the DiggBar Work for You
• 7 Social Media Tools That Will Save You Time!
• Blogging From the Social Media Perspective
• Google Gadget Porn Becomes an Issue
• Master of Disaster! Reputation Management Tips For Do-It-Yourselvers