SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 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:

• How To Optimize For Conversion In Organic Search Results
  

  In the past, SEO success was measured by rankings of target keywords; then the focus moved to traffic; today we have moved into the bottom-line era: organic traffic should be measured by its impact on revenue. This post is based on a presentation delivered at eMetrics San Jose 2009. It is about ways to integrate [...]

• Greece Bans Google Street View, Google Says ‘No, You Didn’t’
  

  There are several reports today that Greece has banned Google’s Street View … but Google disagrees. Privacy is Greece’s main concern, just as it’s been with the other villages, towns, cities, national governments, and other organizations that have lined up against Google Street View. Greece’s Data Protection Authority (DPA) announced on Monday that it’s banned Google [...]

• Google Search Now Supports Microformats and Adds “Rich Snippets” to Search Results
  

  Today at Searchology, Google has launched a search results enhancement called “rich snippets” that uses meta data from web pages (from microformats such as hCard, hCalendar, and RDF) to display additional details (both content and meaning) about pages in the results. This initial launch supports reviews (with sites such as Yelp) and people (with sites [...]

• Google Is A Scraper Site, Says National Association Of Realtors
  

  With support from the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR), the Indianapolis Metropolitan Board of REALTORS® (MIBOR) has forced some of its members to stop allowing certain MLS listings to be crawled and indexed by Google because Google (and other search engines) is considered a “scraper” site. This is the latest episode in a long-running battle over [...]

• How To Pitch A Performance Search Engine Marketing Agency
  

  You have probably heard multiple pitches from advertising agencies and SEM firms looking to take over the search engine marketing campaign for your company. When was the last time one of these firms offered to pay for all of the ads up-front and be paid only for the sales and leads generated? Not [...]

• An Insider’s Look At SMX Advanced: Jeffrey Rohrs
  

  Move over, Denny Crane: SMX has its own legal star programming and moderating panels in Seattle next month. In our fourth installment of our behind the scenes look at how SMX gets put together, Jeff Rohrs talks about paid search, law, fraud and what he’s looking forward to most at SMX Advanced. You are a self-proclaimed [...]

• Live Blogging Google Searchology 2009
  

  Almost an annual event, Google Searchology is a time when Google struts its search stuff in front of assorted reporters. Today’s event gets going at 10am Pacific time. I’ll be live blogging from this page, and you can also watch the event yourself via this webcast. You can also follow @google on Twitter, which will [...]

• How A Twitter Reputation Algorithm Needs To Work
  

  Big news last week: Twitter Search to dive deeper, rank results. Twitter’s @Santosh Jayaram has indicated Twitter Search, which currently searches only Twitter post text, will begin crawling links and indexing the content of pages posted in tweets. To help with search result ranking, Twitter is creating a “reputation” ranking system that among other [...]

• Why Google Radio Ads Failed
  

  Radio Tunes Out Google in Rare Miss for Web Titan from the Wall Street Journal has some excellent history on why Google Radio ultimately failed earlier this year. I’ll quote the story early on, but the Wall Street Journal piece is excellent, on its own. A look at what went wrong shows that Google misjudged [...]

• Microsoft Shutting Down QnA, Questions & Answers Site
  

  LiveSide reports Microsoft has decided to close down the Question and Answer portal, MSN QnA as of May 21st. Microsoft said: At this time, we are closing the QnA site, but the experience of running QnA and gathering all of the great feedback you’ve shared with us will certainly influence future product direction. QnA initially [...]

• Google Sued For Infringing On All Texas Trademark Owners
  

  Eric Goldman reports that Google was sued yesterday by FBX for infringing on the trademarks of all of the Texas trademark owners. Yes, this is a massive class action suit, not just against Google but also against YouTube, AOL, Tuner, MySpace and IAC. We have had many suits filed against Google over trademark infringement in [...]

• Vote For Second Annual Google 4 Doodle Competition
  

  In February Google announced the second Google 4 Doodle competition and now, Google is ready for people to start voting on the finalists. You can vote by clicking here and selecting your favorite Google Doodles from each grade group. There were about 400 state finalists with 40 regional winners. You vote for the regional [...]

• Did Google Really Consider Buying a Piece of the NY Times?
  

  According to a Fortune story that appeared yesterday, Google seriously considered and then decided against buying some or all of a hedge fund’s 19 percent stake in the New York Times. According to the article: Last month, sources tell me, former Hollywood mogul David Geffen made an offer to buy the 19% stake in the Times [...]

• Will Marketing Kill Social Media?
  

  Anyone reading this post is likely to be someone who spends some, if not all, of his or her time at work trying to make use of social media to market products & brands. We spend hours trying to maximize the benefit for our employers or clients from sites such as Facebook, YouTube & Twitter [...]

• Google’s Anti-Trust Problem Appears Very Real
  

  At Google’s recent press event last week, in advance of its annual shareholder meeting, CEO Eric Schmidt seemed to brush off the notion that he might be compelled to resign from Apple’s board because of a potential problem with an “interlocking directorate” (common directors on competing firms). This reaction is consistent with Google’s public calm, [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Business Issues

• 18th International World Wide Web Conference, Official Google Blog
• Microsoft to Raise $3.75B in First Debt Offering, New York Times
• Radio Tunes Out Google in Rare Miss for Web Titan, Wall Street Journal
• Watch Out Google, Obama’s Antitrust Chief Is Looking To Make An Example Out Of You, TechCrunch
• What Google knows about you, ComputerWorld

Link Building

• Convincing People To Link To You Via Email, Search Engine Roundtable
• The Link You Control, Vertical Measures
• The Only Link Building Secrets Out There Are The One’s You Don’t Listen To, Link Spiel

Paid Search & Contextual

• Display Ad Builder goes global, and more updates, Inside AdWords
• When Should You Optimize Your PPC Campaigns?, adCenter Blog for Advertisers
• 56% of Google Advertisers Dislike New AdWords Interface, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google PlusBox Performance Results, Rimm Kaufman
• How To Broaden Your Exposure on the Google Content Network, PPC Hero
• Improve Performance of AdSense Link Units on your Site, Digital Inspiration
• Most Google AdSense Publishers Have No Updated Their Privacy Policies, Search Engine Roundtable
• What the Display Ad Builder means for publishers, Inside AdSense

Searching

• New! AOL Search Toolbar, AOL Search Blog
• Wolfram|Alpha Examples, Wolfram|Alpha Blog
• Another Google Profiles Promotion Box, Google Blogoscoped
• The Computers Powering Computable Knowledge, Wolfram|Alpha Blog
• Tweetmeme Launches The Second Real-Time Tweet Link Search — This Hour, TechCrunch
• Twootles: Search Google and Twitter in one go, TechWhack

SEM Industry

• A Brief Letter to Startup CEOs, CPOs & Founders, SEOmoz
• Presentations from the 2009 Search Engine Meeting are Now Available Online, ResourceShelf

SEO & SEM

• Bot Herding: The Ultimate Tool for PageRank Sculpting, Search Engine Journal
• Can SEO Agencies Effectively Outsource Elements of SEO?, Search Engine Journal
• Do You Use Your Brand Name in the Site Title Tags?, Search Engine Journal
• Google’s Paid Search Human Evaluators, SEO By The Sea
• Key Phrase Research Strategy, SageRock
• Small Google May 2009 Update?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Who’s looking for you? (SEM 101), Live Search Webmaster Center Blog

Social Media

• Canada Gets Fully Twitterized, Twitter Blog
• Facebook Remains Stubbornly Proud Of Position On Holocaust Denial, TechCrunch
• Facebook to test payments system with developers "in a few weeks", VentureBeat
• Making News Content Search & Social Media Friendly, Online Marketing Blog
• Nightline Teams Up With Twitter for New Web Show, ABC News

Video, Music & Image Search

• Flickr Creates New License for White House Photos, Wired
• Magma!, Andrew Baron

Web Analytics

• Back to Basics: Emailing reports, Google Analytics Blog
• New: Link Google AdWords Conversions To Google Analytics, Search Engine Roundtable

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