SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 30, 2012

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

From Search Engine Land:

• 5 Ways Conversion Takes Market Share Like Candy From A Baby

  They are out there, and they are not nice. They seek to take food from the mouths of your children and to put your career at risk. They are your online competitors, and they won’t think twice about leaving you crying helplessly as they eat your ice cream cone. In every industry, at least one […]
• Google Sending 51% Less Traffic To Facebook Pages Since “Search Plus Your World” Launch; Bing Drops, Too

  This January Google launched “Search Plus Your World (SPYW),” a service that drastically customized search results based on social connections while bolstering visibility of Google+ products. While the new changes absolutely increased visibility for Google+, there was concern that the changes would negatively affect other social networks. Five months into the SPYW era, some startling statistics have surfaced in regards to […]

• 4 Content Assets To Engage Prospects At Any Stage In The Buying Cycle

  One of the most important aspects of increasing online conversions (particularly for B2B focused sites) is speaking to prospects at all stages in the buying cycle. A prospect doing research on a topic is at a different place than one who is looking to hire a company, and each prospect must be met at the […]

• Recruiting: 12 Questions For Uncomfortably Hands-On SEO Interviews

  I was shocked by the widespread, deeply negative reaction to the introductory paragraph of my column last month, in which I described beginning every interview with a math problem. The response is probably best typified by EricM: Despite missing the entire point of the article (that you can use simple free tools to calculate confidence […]

• 7 Tips For Lowering Cost Per Action (CPA) Using Search Retargeting

  Value, like beauty, is usually in the eye of the beholder. In online advertising, the relative value of various campaign metrics has been subject to much debate. For brand marketers, well-designed banners shown to targeted consumers on high quality sites are perceived to have high value. Similarly, clicks and high click through rates (CTRs) that […]

• Peter Carl Fabergé Google Egg Logo

  Google has a special logo on their home page today for Peter Carl Fabergé, a Russian Jewelry artist, know for creating easter eggs made of jewels, gems and high-end metals. These eggs were known as Fabergé Eggs. Peter Carl Fabergé was born today 166 years ago in Saint Petersburg, Russia. His family was in the […]

• Google Places Is Over, Company Makes Google+ The Center Of Gravity For Local Search

  When Google+ and Google+ Pages for business were introduced a little less than a year ago many people in the local search arena began anticipating the day when Google would merge or integrate Google Places and Google+ Pages. Well, today is that day. Google Places pages have been entirely replaced by new Google+ Local pages. As of this […]

• Google Says Knowledge Graph Has Led To More Searches

  Searches are up in the two weeks since Google launched Knowledge Graph, its database of facts that adds context to a variety of search results. Although the company didn’t share specific numbers, Google Fellow Amit Singhal told the Wall Street Journal that “people are interacting with it [the Knowledge Graph] more” and “doing more [search] […]

Recent Headlines From MarTech, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

• ICANN’s Domain Name “Reveal Day” Is June 13
• Tim Cook: “Stay Tuned” For Possible Apple-Facebook Integration
• Once Deemed Evil, Google Now Embraces “Paid Inclusion”
• New Google+ Local Tab Unveiled, Will Replace Google Places
• Seasonal Tips For Engaging Email Subscribers
• Twitter Cuts Load Time By 80% & Gets Rid Of Hashbangs In URLs

Search News From Around The Web:

Business Issues

• Facebook Campus Expansion Plan Approved, New Limit Of 6,600 Workers, thenextweb.com
• Google’s self-driving car faces competition from Europe, latimes.com

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Local Search “Pros” Breaking the Hippocratic Oath, LocalVisibilitySystem.com
• Bing Photosynth for Windows Phone is Here, Bing Search Blog
• New Google+ Local with Zagat Ratings: Better Than Yelp?, TIME.com
• Rankings on Google+ Local: Some Observations, Mihmorandum

Link Building

• Google Penguin & Pointless Link Removals for SEO, markrushworth.com
• How to Turn Your Blog Into a Link Generation Machine, blueglass.com
• The 7 Kinds Of Links You Didn’t Know You Have, Search Engine People
• The Ethics of Link Building Through Content, Outspoken Media
• Why Google is Smart Banning Agencies For Link Buying, Jennifer Slegg

Paid Search & Contextual

• Google Allows You To Place Remarketing Tags Across Multiple Sites, Search Engine Roundtable
• Mobile rich media advertising gets easier than ever before, Google Mobile Ads Blog

SEM Industry

• How Skewed Are My SEO Polls?, Search Engine Roundtable

SEO & SEM

• 5 Reasons why you should outsource your PPC, Search Engine People
• A Message from the Next Generation of Digital Marketers – “We hear you loud and clear about Pandas, Penguins, and Privacy”, Search Engine Journal
• Google Cutting Back On Displaying Rich Snippets?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Rich Snippets – What They Are and Why You Should Use Them On Your Site, StayOnSearch
• Only 18% Of Y Combinator Web Sites Use Google Webmaster Tools, Search Engine Roundtable
• Recovering from an Over Optimization Penalty – A True Story, SEOmoz
• SEO Isn’t Magic – So Stop Doing SEO Tricks, SEOmoz
• The iAcquire Affair; did D&Bcc get hit as well?, Search News Central

Social Media

• How Twitter Beat Facebook At Its Own Story, BuzzFeed
• Tim Cook On Apple’s (Tumultuous) Relationship With Facebook, “Stay Tuned”, TechCrunch

Video, Music & Image Search

• D10 Video: Apple "Doubling Down" on Siri, AllThingsD