SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 27, 2011

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

From Search Engine Land:

• Size Does Matter: How Retailers Should Manage Campaigns For Big & Small Ticket Items

  Big retailers with a substantial store presence most often have a big online presence with thousands of SKUs. Apart from drawing consumers who might solely look online to buy products, they also help consumers in the earlier research phase of the buying cycle. Sometimes, the merchant will complete a transaction online that might have otherwise […]
• Official: Google’s New Travel Search OneBox

  As we expected, Google officially announced the launch of their new flight onebox. The new travel onebox will show up when you search for flight related keywords with destinations. For example, [flights from new york to san francisco] or [flights from new york or [flights to new york]. They all work to five you an […]

• Search In Pics: Google Hotel, Foursquare T-Shirt & Yahoo Keychain

  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. Foursquare Mayor T-Shirt: Yahoo Door Keychain: Google’s Android USB Keychain: Google Hotel Billboard: Google Maps Bus […]

• Twitter Adds Ability To See Other’s Timeline & Gmail Adds People Widget

  Did you ever wonder what your favorite SEO’s Twitter timeline looked like? Well, if you did, you can now peak in on someone else’s timeline. For example, check out what Danny’s timeline looks like by going over here. As you can see, Twitter added the ability to see what the 1,801 people on Twitter that […]

• PayPal Sues Google, Sees Powerful Threat To Its Future In Google Wallet

  In California it’s almost impossible to stop a key employee from jumping ship to a rival company. The law heavily favors the employee’s right to earn a living and typically won’t permit the former employer to prevent the employee from working for a rival. California law does, however, protect “trade secrets” and will sometimes permit […]

• 5 Website Tips To Decrease User Frustration

  If you ever need a topic to discuss at a social gathering, just ask everyone, “What do you find the most frustrating about using websites?” There are so many common complaints and issues raised by everyday Internet users and yet so many websites are still driving us crazy. Websites contain oversights. It happens to even […]

• Google Tiptoes Into India With Street View

  Google launched Street View on Thursday in India, the second most-populous country on earth. But “launch” may be a bit of an overstatement because, in a country that’s also the seventh biggest in square mileage, Google is only taking photographs in one city: Bangalore. Google announced that it’s using both cars and trikes to photographs […]

• IDC: Google Overtakes Yahoo In Display Ads For First Quarter Ever

  Move over Yahoo, there’s a new display advertising champion in town, as of the first quarter of 2011. You may have heard of the company, as they’ve also been dominating the search advertising category.  According to a new report from research firm IDC, Google’s net U.S. display advertising revenue share grew to 14.7% in the […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Google Announces APIs Scheduled for Shutdown, Read/Write Web

Business Issues

• Facebook Taps Joel Kaplan to Head Washington Office, New York Times
• Google Leads $85 Million Investment Round in Social-Game Startup Kabam, Bloomberg
• Google, Facebook lose social network patent ruling, Reuters
• L021: BREAKING: Government Investigations Have Frozen Google’s Manual Search Results, Launch
• Microsoft confirms move to Moffett, San Jose Business Journal

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Microsoft’s biggest mobile money-maker is Android, not Windows Phone 7, Computerworld Blogs

Link Building

• Competitive Link Analysis Tips – Whiteboard Friday, SEOmoz

Paid Search & Contextual

• FTC Plans New Online-Ad Rules, Wall Street Journal

SEO & SEM

• Adhood.com beats Google, Facebook and Twitter, Majestic SEO Blog
• Big Update to the SEOmoz Toolbar for Firefox!, SEOmoz
• The New Ocities of Search Engine Optimization, SEO Theory
• Why Time is a Big Factor in Big-Time SEO Success, Search Engine Guide
• An update on the Google Base API deprecation timeline, Google Merchant Blog
• Dynamic Keyword Research – Don’t Optimize Campaigns on Sinking Sand, Search Engine Guide
• PPC Costs Less than SEO, Searching Beyond the Paid
• Tweets Influencing Google’s Ranking More?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Video Placement Helps Google Video Index Videos, Search Engine Roundtable

Social Media

• Obama to name Twitter CEO to advisory committee, MarketWatch
• Facebook Is Developing Ways to Share Media, New York Times

Video, Music & Image Search

• Your photos and data on Flickr, Flickr Blog

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

• 25 reasons a site will link to yours – Good tips from Ken McGaffin on 25 reasons a website will link to yours.Includes a slideshow presentation, and the comprehensive list.
• How Google Killed Category Killer Domain Names – Aaron Wall explains how the domain bubble grew & ultimately popped. Search has moved away from relevancy toward promoting brands. As SEOs we don't control Google. We can only focus on promoting that which they reward.
  The smart money is now saying that domain names are generally significantly overpriced, especially as an asset class valued based on SEO potential.
• How To Succeed At Facebook Advertising – Forget theory, lets get real. BlitzLocal provides a huge amount of information on Facebook Advertising using a real-life campaign.
• 15 Takeaways about Google and SEO from Matt Cutts – Nick Roshon recaps 15 points he thought were important in Matt Cutts' live video chat.  He covers some topics not mentioned on other sites.  Well-written recap for an impromptu event.
• How to Close an Online Community Without Hurting Your Brand – With all the advice out there about how to start your online community, it's time to give out some about how to handle it when your brand needs to shut down an online community.
• How SEOmoz Gained 1000s of Visits from Google News (You Can Too) – Get more visists from Google news today.
• How to Use Google Places New RSS Feed To Automate Your Review Spam Farm – Mike Blumenthal shows how you could use the new Google Places RSS Feed for black hat purposes.