SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 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:

• New Google Blog Targets YouTube’s Big Brands & Advertisers
  

  Google has launched a new blog, the YouTube Biz Blog, that continues its effort to “help partners and advertisers find a home on YouTube.” It’s a theme we’ve written about recently when YouTube signed deals with major TV studios and announced plans to create the “Hulu” of music videos. YouTube is trying to transform from [...]

• Yahoo Launches Placemaker, Adding “Whereness” To Unstructured Internet Data
  

  Yesterday Yahoo spoke about taking search much more into the real world by turning “web pages” into “web objects.” Today there were a couple of announcements at the Where 2.0 conference related to identifying unstructured data online and linking it according to places and locations — in other words made geo-relevant. Tyler Bell of Yahoo gave [...]

• Christin Engelberth Wins Google 4 Doodle 2009 Competition
  

  Google announced Christin Engelberth, a sixth grader at Bernard Harris Middle School in San Antonio, Texas, as the winner of the second Google 4 Doodle competition. Her Doodle will be displayed on the Google.com home page tomorrow, May 21, 2009. In addition, she will receive a $15,000 college scholarship, a laptop, and a $25,000 technology [...]

• Larry Page Embraces “Real-Time” Search
  

  There’s a much longer post to be written on Google and so-called “real-time” search. Twitter is both more and less than a search engine, but there are lots of third parties doing search-like things around the Twitter data. However, yesterday at an event in London, Loic Le Meur elicited this response from Google co-founder Larry [...]

• Germans Threaten Sanctions Over Google Street View
  

  This is now a familiar story: European privacy concerns and complaints against Google Street View. From angry mobs to European regulators, Google is confronting many more objections as it tries to visually map The Continent than it did in the US. This installment involves German “data protection regulators” in Hamburg who object to the way that [...]

• Google’s Missing Link Fossil Logo
  

  Yesterday, scientists found what they are calling the “missing link” in evolution. Scientists found the “Darwinius masillae,” which is known as the missing link between humans and apes. You can read about the discovery in this article. Google posted a logo for the special discover and linked the logo to a search for missing [...]

• Google Offering “Expert Advice” To Some AdWords Advertisers
  

  Tim Cohn noticed that Google is no offering some level of “expert” advice for AdWords advertisers with their AdWords accounts. When Tim logged into one of his accounts, he noticed a link that read, “Get started with expert advice on Adwords.” The link takes the advertiser to a form, which he/she can complete and Google [...]

• Search & Content Networks: A B2B Classic Combo
  

  Peanut butter and jelly. Batman and Robin. Milk and cookies. Some things just naturally go together because they complement one another—I like to think of them as classic combos. They remind me of search and content networks. Though not always used by B2B marketers, the search engines’ content networks can be complementary to existing search efforts, [...]

• Forget Kumo — Will Microsoft’s New Search Engine Launch Soon As Bing?
  

  It’s not long now. Microsoft’s new search engine has been widely expected to launch soon, and now it appears likely to happen within the next week or two. And might Bing be the new name? The latest report is that Microsoft will demonstrate its new “Kumo” service during next week’s D: All Things Digital conference. As [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Latest round of Reader improvements, googlereader.blogspot.com
• Google News stutters for second day in a row, ComputerWorld.com
• Introducing Our First Verified Apps, Facebook Developers News
• New Facebook Application Directory Goes Live, All Facebook

Business Issues

• Vish Makhijani Leaves Operating Role At Yandex, Moves To Zynga, TechCrunch
• Facebook CEO says IPO a few years out, Reuters
• Google: The Internet’s Organized Crime Family, Eric Lander
• The University of Michigan and Google Amended Digitization Agreement, UM Library
• Yahoo eyes social networking acquisitions, Reuters
• Yahoo lobbying tally falls to $460K in 1Q, Forbes
• Yahoo Sets Up R&D Center In Beijing, ChinaTechNews.com
• Yahoo! India appoints new Managing Director, www.indianexpress.com

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Earth Outreach Gets a Makeover, Google LatLong
• Fantastic Free Google Earth Game: Ships, Google Earth Blog
• Common Problems with Street Addresses on Web Sites, GetListed.org
• Earn revenue from your mashup with the Maps Ad Unit, googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.com
• Google Maps LBC Changes & Upgrades, Mike Blumenthal
• Google Sync Beta – Now for S60, Official Google Mobile Blog
• Introducing the Google Maps Data API in Labs, Google Geo Developers Blog

Paid Search & Contextual

• AdWords API on App Engine (Python), AdWords API Blog
• 10 tips to improve your PPC campaigns, Site Visibility
• AdWords Success Stories, Inside AdWords
• June 3rd Webcast: adCenter API Live Meeting Schedule, adCenter Blog for Advertisers
• Redirecting your feed to maximize revenue potential, AdSense for Feeds
• What To Look for if Your Volume Tanks on the Google Content Network, PPC Hero

Searching

• Google Suggest Improves, Google Operating System
• Thanks for Asking! Ask.com is a Webware 100 Award Winner Three Years Running, Ask.com Blog
• Yahoo Search, As We Know It, Is Over, TechCrunch
• Key Milestones for SearchMonkey and BOSS, Yahoo Search Blog
• Taking the Yahoo Approach To Happier Users, outspokenmedia.com
• Why Are the Search Engines Fixing Something That’s Not Broken?, Marketing Pilgrim

SEO & SEM

• Can Experts Exchange be excluded from search results?, YouTube Blog
• 41 Ultimate Tips from SMX London 2009, www.seoptimise.com
• BFFs: Users and Search Engine Friendly Sites, Search Engine Journal
• Boosting Brands, Businesses, and Other Entities: How a Search Engine Might Assume a Query Implies a Site Search, SEO By The Sea
• Canonical Tag Not Yet Reliable, www.stephanspencer.com
• Google Wants To Know If They Helped You Get Better Rankings, Search Engine Roundtable
• How to defeat SEO snake oil, Econsultancy
• Increase Web Traffic: Part 4 of 4, SageRock
• Put your keywords where the emphasis is (SEM 101), Live Search Webmaster Center Blog
• URL Rewrites and 301 Redirects – How does it all work?, SEOmoz
• Will DiggBar create duplicate content issues?, YouTube Blog

Social Media

• 21 Twitter Directories and Follower Finders to Expand Your Twittersphere, Jason Bartholme
• Does Twitter Hate Advertising?, Twitter Blog
• Is Guy Kawasaki Singlehandedly Ruining Twitter? (Part 2), www.traffick.com
• There Is No Social Media Kit, Altitude Branding
• Tweeting Too Hard: A site for shaming the twitteringly self-important, VentureBeat
• You asked, we listened, Yahoo Answers Blog

Video, Music & Image Search

• Online Video Ad-Ventures, BruceClay.com

Web Analytics

• How to Setup Goals in Google Analytics, Google Analytics Blog

Other Items

• Advice in interesting times, ycorpblog.com
• Energized about our first Google PowerMeter partners, Official Google Blog

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

• Adding User Behavior to SEO Considerations
• SEO Site Audit, a Guerrilla Webmaster’s Guide
• Did Google Let The Search Cat Out Of The Bag?
• Narrowing The Communication Gap Between SEOs And Developers
• Smash a Brick into the face Link building
• The ROI of PPC Beats Most Advertising Opportunities
• 3+ Keyword and Topic Visualization Tools
• How Google detects paid links in websites
• Traffick: Is Guy Kawasaki Singlehandedly Ruining Twitter? (Part 2)
• Ruud Hein: “How I Stay Ahead of The SEO Pack”