SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 28, 2008

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

From Search Engine Land:

• 
  Why You Need To Know SEO Basics, Even If You Outsource
  When you outsource SEO, you don’t outsource responsibility and accountability for getting the job done and driving more traffic. Even though you may outsource SEO completely, you really should invest the time understand SEO basics to best manage your SEO firm, your strategy and provide greater value to your…
• 
  Mainstreaming Google Earth By Plugging It Into The Browser
  Google Earth has always been a great product — and a popular one, downloaded more than 100 million times. Despite this volume it’s still not mainstream however. Microsoft Virtual Earth decided not to go with a big downloadable client and use a browser plug-in instead. This was a smart strategy…
• 
  Advertisers Cloaking AdWords URLs To Get Around Display URL Policy
  Remember Google announced that they will be strictly enforcing the AdWords display URL policy a few months back? Well, they actually started enforcing the policy at the beginning of this month. Some advertisers who had display URLs that did not match their destination URLs were impacted. It appears that some…
• 
  Cool Sights In Google Street View
  The Street View feature in Google Maps has caused a flurry of attention from people ranging from privacy advocates to voyeurs to legislators. The ability to pan around browsing photos shot along streets seems fun and compelling, though it’s also raised all sorts of issues and controversy as our…
• 
  Interview With Google’s Carter Maslan About “Mapspam”
  After noticing a steady increase in the amount of mapspam (also documented by Mike Blumenthal) appearing on Google in universal search results, we decided to ask the company about the phenomenon and what measures it’s taking to combat the problem. Earlier this week I posed a series of questions to…
• 
  Search 4.0: Putting Humans Back In Search
  Previously I’ve covered what I dubbed Search 3.0, how search engines have evolved toward blending vertical or specialized results into "regular" web listings. Today, the step beyond that: Search 4.0, how personal, social and human-edited data can be used to refine search results….
• 
  Google’s CEO Talks Up Mobile Ad Opportunity, Skyfire Browser Pushes For “The Real Internet” On Mobile Devices
  Google very clearly recognizes how strategic the mobile internet is both for revenue growth and the company’s future. Hence the Android mobile platform, the bidding in the 700MHz auction and all the effort Google is directing toward mobile generally. CEO Eric Schmidt repeatedly emphasizes mobile as the next big frontier…
• 
  Serial Clickfraud Lawsuit Firm Strikes Again, This Time At Citysearch
  Click fraud lawsuit targets IAC’s Citysearch from News.com reports the law firm of Kabateck Brown Kellner is targeting IAC’s Citysearch.com for allegedly “defrauding its advertising customers of millions of dollars” by “turning a blind eye to click fraud” and actually “encouraging” the click fraud. This Los Angeles-based law firm has…
• 
  Microsoft Joins The Social Bookmarking Game
  Microsoft’s John Martin has shared a preview of the new Microsoft social bookmarking tool that will be demonstrated at the TechEd North America event in the upcoming week. John provided a shortlist of features and two screen captures of the social bookmarking tool at his blog post. Based on the…
• 
  Microsoft’s Kevin Johnson Profiled By Fortune As “The Man Who Would Run Yahoo”
  Microsoft’s Kevin Johnson is perhaps the main strategist in the company’s battle for online advertising dollars and in some sense driving the future of Microsoft as an entity. Fortune magazine interviews and profiles Johnson. Johnson runs the group that controls the Windows OS and online services, including Live Search….
• 
  Google Asked To Pay $77 Million To Belgian Newspapers For Copyright Violations
  Yesterday we were reminded of Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit against Google for copyright infringement. That case of course has yet to be determined. However, in Europe, a group of French-language Belgian newspapers previously won a copyright case against Google and are now moving to collect $77 million (€49m) in damages….

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Getting Gmail anywhere: IMAP versus POP, Official Gmail Blog
• Google to provide search software to MySpace email, Reuters
• Google Spreadsheets Macros and List Mode Editing, Google Blogoscoped
• Official Google Blog: Happy birthday, Google Gears!, Official Google Blog

Business Issues

• Industry Moves: Yahoo’s Ira Kurgan Returns to Fox Broadcasting, paidContent.org
• Survey finds that MBA students want to work at Google, CNN Money
• The Press Association: Google named best place to work, Google
• Forget Competition, the Search Wars are Over, Search Engine Watch
• Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, CEO Steve Ballmer and Windows 7 Preview | D6 Highlights, AllThingsD
• Some Kind Of Yahoo Deal Getting Closer; Microsoft Still Wants The Whole Thing, paidContent.org
• Marcial: Yahoo’s Endgame, BusinessWeek
• Microsoft’s Ozzie says Yahoo would be accelerator, Reuters

Link Building

• Dmoz Links Are Worth Gold In Googles Eyes, ShoeMoney

Paid Search & Contextual

• Google Rolls out New Invoice System, and Immediately Bills Wrong People! | Search News and International SEO Travel, McAnerin Muse
• Google Automatic Matching Test Only Generated 1 Click! , PPC Hero
• Help With Minimum Bids, Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog
• Avoid the One Size Fits All Mentality! PPC Search Engines Are Not Created Equal , PPC Hero
• Improving Lead Quality from PPC Advertising: The Foundation, Search Marketing Sage

Searching

• Getting crafty with Google Book Search, Inside Google Book Search
• Making the Web Searchable: The Story of SearchMonkey, Read/Write Web
• Google on Aggregating Ad Data, Yahoo Messes with Map Reduce, Microsoft Explores Hierarchical Tagging -SEO by the SEA, SEO By The Sea
• Ann Arbor firm UNIVAL inputs data for Google Health, Ann Arbor Business Review
• Real-time stock quotes on the house, Yodel Anecdotal

SEM Industry

• Small Business Marketing Unleashed Part Deux: Fall in Columbus, Search Engine Guide
• Are Microsoft & Siemens Teaming Up in Europe Against Google?, Search Engine Roundtable

SEO & SEM

• Does Google Support The Abbreviations and Acronyms Tags?, Search Engine Roundtable

Social Media

• China Leader Makes Debut in Great Wall of Facebook, New York Times
• orkut.co.in Google Introduces Indian Edition of Orkut with Themes, Digital Inspiration
• AOL Joins OpenSocial, TechCrunch

Other Items

• IAB Pushes Best Practices In Online Advertising, Inquisitr

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

• Top 10 Signs You’re Spamming Sphinn
• Media Watch: Linkbait-gate Covered on TV, including Sphinn reactions
• Online Reputation Repair by Promoting Other People’s Pages
• How to Take on a Major SEO Client
• Top 10 Reasons Why SEOs Fail on Social Media
• If Googleplex Employees Don’t Understand The Webmaster Guidelines, How Can They Expect Webmasters To Adhere To Them?
• Luring Social Media Visitors to Other Pages
• How Google Handles Hacked Web Sites
• Interview of Neil Patel, Social Media Marketing Legend
• Michael Gray, Will Critchlow, Steve Rubel & Ian Lurie Define Social Media
• SEOmoz’s Web 2.0 Awards